


Rewritten History

by ravengabrielle



Category: Dramione - Fandom, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: Dramione FanFiction Forum, Community: dramionedrabble, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-02-23 09:48:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 35,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23776306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravengabrielle/pseuds/ravengabrielle
Summary: ONESHOT. Rated K. Somehow Hermione Granger has entered Malfoy Manor. Alone. Confused. And seemingly, in love with Draco Malfoy? He has a mission to send her back home before Voldemort discovers her, but the story she tells has him second guessing himself...and all he knew to be true about what it meant to be a Malfoy.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy, Lucius Malfoy/Narcissa Black Malfoy
Comments: 19
Kudos: 107
Collections: Dramione





	1. Chapter 1

Thunder clapped high above the manor’s roof. Its rumble shook the portraits against their respective walls, earning a few snide remarks and complaints of the portrait’s occupants. Their sharp tones were drowned out by the air vibration, the audible anger of the storm as it raged against Wiltshire, England, with fury. Hard spatters of rain beat against window glass. It was an answer of applause to the thunders mighty roar. Open windowpanes slammed shut with vapor of the storm sprayed across the room.  
The rare night of fallen shadow rested against the sprawling estate. A single flame flickered as a single living occupant walked the lonely halls of the vast manor atop the black grounds. It, that sliver of yellow light, strolled through the desolate aisles of an abandoned library. Dust in thick layers amongst the rows and rows of endless knowledge passed through centuries of distinguished wizards and witches. The best had scoured through those very archives. The path of family lines worn in floorboards older than half the countries homes.  
The flickering candle moved away from the sullen loneliness of the library. It walked the halls of whispering portraits; many of whom still complained of the rainstorm.   
Another sudden flash of lightening brought the candle of light to the floor, a colorful exclamation, and a begrudging scoop the of the wax stick and return of it as a guiding light of the bowels of the house.  
Draco Malfoy was alone. It was the first time he was left alone in years.   
His parents, Narcissa and Lucius, never went on holiday without him. It was the first time since he was born that they released control of the ancient family home to him to fiddle away his holiday as he pleased.  
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry gave an unpleasant amount of stress upon the young Malfoy’s shoulders and much in the fashion of his father, he preferred to do his panic out of the sight of others. So, Lucius and Narcissa went on holiday to France to visit kin while Draco was left to enjoy the loneliness.  
He walked as a corpse in his own home, uncertain of where to sulk, what to do, and just how to decipher the thoughts he developed over the past year. Nothing helped. Not stolen sips of fire whiskey from his father’s study, nor a little dueling practice in piste, just off the west wing of the manor.   
After it all, nothing changed.   
Draco walked and walked, back the entire length of both wings of the house and through the greenhouse, parlors, library, offices. He was so bored that he entered the kitchens below the main level of the house for the first time since a boy. The elves were frightened to see him there.   
He ignored them and trudged through their quarters without care. It was his kitchen. He had a right to be there.  
Their little quivering bodies made his throat clench. Like they had much to fear. If they refused a request, if they were scared, if they messed up, all they were given was a small curse. They recovered within a day.   
Not like him. Pressure to enlist in the Dark Lord’s ranks was upon him. It was such an honor to his family. They were proud, without question, of the possibility that Draco would be granted a tattoo of the sacred call.   
The throat clench rose again.   
If his father were to ask him, there was little choice extended. One did not reject an offer of the Dark Lord. It shamed his family, his name, everything he stood for, to go against his father’s wishes. Still, Draco felt apprehensive. He feared the madman wizard who terrorized the world. The man had red eyes, a complexion like death so grey and sickly, a mood that switched with every passing moment. A true monster.  
Another clap of thunder shook the portraits. Voices of his ancestors whined of the disruption, as if they weren’t well rested enough. They were dead.  
“Get to bed, boy!” A nearby portrait of his grandfather, Abraxas Malfoy, grunted in that deep-belly grunt. The man had a sheet of white hair tied at the nape of the man’s neck with a black ribbon wrapped around the straight strands. He was an old man in his death. Abraxas wore the endless wrinkles of a hundred-year-old wizard, suddenly killed in a freak accident rather than deterioration of body. “Put that bloody light out and head on.”  
Although the man was dead, he gave more commands than Lucius.   
Thunder grumbled overhead, once, twice. Lightening cracked the sky like a spell through air. The hall was ignited in sudden hot white light as Draco observed through the windows over an empty estate. His mother’s beloved cheddar pink flowers flapped violently as the wind ripped across the vast grounds. Acres of open spaces summoned up a wind strong enough to clatter the shutters of the stable.   
“Hop it. Go on. Hop, hop, hop it,” his grandfather bellowed.  
Draco casted a wary glance out the window once more. “Fine.”  
Patience to argue with a painting was a quality he reserved for another time.   
He found his own suite with ease. The dark of the house didn’t shadow his memory of every board of each hall in the manor. A child without siblings only kept preoccupied with typical things half of childhood. The other half was spent snooping, learning, practicing. It was his loneliness that bred his skill for determination. Without the distraction of another to play, he was able to dedicate focus to nothing but his goals.   
Memory of the manor was not an easy feat, but he conquered it.  
The walls of his personal suite were papered with silver wallpaper, continuous snakeskin run throughout. Upon the walls were large tapestries of elements of a broom: the bristles, smooth and shaped, the footrests of shiny silver and swirled with gold, varnished wood of the body. Broomsticks of every model, their creators, every available product for flying and Quidditch rested within the room. He knew every element.  
Flying was magic, art, literal precision in practice. It made the world become the free globe it was, not the shoebox it felt at times.  
The prized rarity, an original blueprint of a Silver Arrow broomstick, was encased in glass at the head of his bed. It was his favorite. He kept it just in sight as he lay in bed at night, dazzled by the piece of flying history he had. It, also, have him a great eyesight of the silver frame where Viktor Krum caught the Snitch at the World Cup. He remembered the moment from the stands. It was every bit of remarkable as a replay as it was in the real world.   
Draco laid his head against the cool fabric of his pillow. Its minty scent eased his apprehension in the loneliness of a house he never resided in solely before. The empty groan of the wind was more like a hollow call out in the vast darkness of the estate. Every so often, his heart raced with fear. He’d thought it was Voldemort calling out for him to join him.  
He tossed and turned. He fought against his sheets, drenched with sweat, fearful he might awake to find the Dark Lord before him, oath on his tongue or death on his wand.   
Late in the night he heard screaming sobs split through the quiet of the manor. Cries of pain and sadness. He was sure of it.  
The sounds grew softer. It was as if the person swallowed down their tears to the silent tremors that happened not long after a violent sob. Not that he knew. No, he never cried.   
Draco summoned an elf, but none came.   
He groaned with his bare feet hit the cold floor.   
“Father will here of this.” He growled.   
The frigid floors awakened him fully from the warmth of sleep. It lifted the veil of dreams from his mind and inserted a distinct interest into who in the hell was in his house and why they thought they could cry there. Malfoy Manor was not a shelter for wayward hearts. It was a bloody palace for the best of Wizarding England.   
The doors of his bedroom wretched open and hit the walls as he stormed out into the hall. His silky pajama bottoms swished as he walked toward the noise. It was away from the main hall. The cries were had the soft echo of the conservatory.   
He cursed when he touched the even colder floor of the first floor. “If I get my hands on them, they’ll wish they were never born. Making me walk on my bare feet. Like an animal!”  
The black glass of the conservatory came into view. French doors of complete darkness made him second guess his hearing, but as he stepped closer, he noticed the doors ajar from the frame.  
He ripped them open and stormed inside. “Who’s there?”  
Silence greeted him. Silent complete black. Draco grabbed his wand and forced it forward. Blue light of an ethereal midnight moon of full light shined straight forward in a piece of its own moonlight.   
Vines of his mother’s plants retracted from the light. Still, he was forced to rustle his way through their greenery to continue on his path into the depths of the conservatory where flower upon flower, plant upon plant called home, thanks to his mother’s incessant need to grow things.   
“Might as well been in Hufflepuff,” Draco grumbled as he brushed off the petals of a shedding wolf flower. It had like grey fur and when it shed, it shook like a dog to spread its fur across the ground. Having climbed through a pack of wolf flowers, he was covered head to toe in shed fur. He brushed off his shoulders and pants. “I’ll burn this bleeding room to the ground. I swear it. I will. Let her hide her embarrassing hobby elsewhere. The stables, for god sakes! Anywhere! But, no. They have to be out in the open for everyone to see.”  
He heard the sobs resume in the quiet. They were softer.   
“Who’s there?” He commanded in his firmest tone. “You better have a good reason for being here or so help me…”  
Then he saw her. There was a small witch bent over, sobbing, in his home. She straightened instantly. Long brown curls cascaded down her back, thick and plenty. Light caramel hues highlight the warm milk-chocolate hair. Her sniffles softened as her face turned to the blue light, born out of darkness came the face of a witch he least expected to be within his home, crying.   
“Granger?” He exclaimed. “What are you - .”  
He was cut off by her slender arms wrapping around his neck. The smell of her cinnamon perfume was forced into his nose. Not by his choice.   
“Oh. Thank Salazar. You’re alright. I thought I’d lost you.” She breathed into his neck. His neck which was now wet with tears. It would take a good scourify to remove their presence from his mind. He shrugged out of her embrace.   
It didn’t stop her.   
She looked around her, wiped the fallen tears from her cheeks and said, “Why is everything so different? I-I tried to leave here but the doors trapped me. And you hate flowers. When did you fill the observatory with flowers? And why, why is the floor all different? And my magic. The Manor - it won’t let me apparate. Has something happened?”  
Draco was insulted by the inclination she’d been within his home. No muggleborn was welcomed within the doors of Malfoy Manor. Not ever. And if he didn’t remove her from the place, his father would find the record tarnished. He would not let that happen.  
“I’d appreciate if you didn’t do your annoying snooping on my family, rather research your friends the Weasley. Their one room hovel is bound to be quite interesting.” He grabbed her by the back of the arm. She winced in pain. Tears once more bubbled down her face. “For your information, this was never an observatory. It might do well to double check facts before galivanting into my home in the dead of night. I would’ve been in the right to curse you.”  
“Friends. Weasleys? You mean, Ronald Weasley?” She rambled. “I can’t stand the wizard. Neither can you.” Her body was dead weight as he pulled her out the conservatory door. “Of course it’s the observatory! How else would you see your mother? Draco, what is the matter with you!”  
The way she spoke rang in his ear. It was odd. Hermione Granger kept a firm, strong voice near him. She did not fear him. Often she used her words as her weapon to dance around his taunts and attentions. There was not a moment where he heard his first name uttered from her lips. It was the first time it was not laced with her pitiful self-righteous attitude.  
He brought himself close to her face. Not a breath stolen. She remained calm in front of him, comfortable even, though her eyes were terrified. Granger did not fear him. Something else frightened her more than him, and that unsettled him more.  
“My mother,” he repeated with question.   
She nodded frantically; eyes wild in their sockets. “You know. How you look at the stars to see your mother in the stars with all her other family members? Even though she wasn’t technically a star, every other Black was, and you couldn’t bear the thought of your mother not living in the night sky where all the Blacks belonged. You made the observatory your office, always able to see the night sky above you so that no matter what constellation she was with, she’d know you were there, looking for her.”  
Hermione looked in his eyes. Their watery red rim examined him closely as he absorbed the information.   
Then she froze. His eyes narrowed.  
“What?” He asked.  
“You’re not Draco,” she said. The tears started to fall. Her chest shook no matter how tight her arms hugged her body. The hold was not enough to stop the obvious. Tears flooded down her cheeks. “Oh no. No. No. NO. You look like him, but you’re not. You’re not him. You’re not Draco!”  
The big brown eyes couldn’t even look him in the eye.  
“But I am,” he said. “I am Draco Malfoy.”  
Hermione’s hand trembled at her lips as the flesh of her cheeks was stained with her tears. “You’re not _my_ Draco.”   
The statement was painful. Her eyes welled up with water the longer the silence lasted until they finally reached their max, overflowed and released their fill over her face. She trembled. It traveled down her spine, extended the length of her arms, her thighs, straight down to the knees that wobbled violently knocked together.   
It was no secret that Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger were not friends. If anything, they were enemies. Mortal enemies, possibly. She was Harry Potter’s best friend, a muggleborn, everything that he despised in a witch was what she was.   
How could she believe there was something more?   
“Are you?” She barked.  
The witch cried and stared at him with watery, angry eyes.  
He shook his head. The past made her tears a prize of torment, but these did not bring satisfaction. She looked of a total piece broken in half. Somehow it made his tongue bitter. He did not want to answer in words for they might turn his tongue to sourness.  
“Who am I to you, then?” She retorted quickly, with a bite of sharpness. “Who is Hermione Granger to this, Draco Malfoy?”  
That was the Granger he knew. That was that sharp toothy bite he knew of the Gryffindor princess.  
“We - .”  
“Friends?” She crossed her arms. “We’ve got to be, at the very least, friends.”  
Draco shook his head. “We are not.”  
Her arms dropped in shock. “Acquaintances? Just introduced, perhaps?”  
Again, he shook his head. “I’ve known you for four years. Soon to be five.”  
She gasped. Her hands were at her mouth, rubbing her bottom lip.   
“So, that leaves…”  
She shook her head, unable to finish the sentence.  
“Enemies,” he confirmed.  
There was a burst of tears. She walked toward a wall. Her fingers ran down the paper.  
“But how?” Light glistened off the shine of her tears. “How can that be?”  
Her voice raised as she pointed to more aspects of the house as if she recognized them. “How can that be? I’ve spent days in that parlor with your cousin Claire when she visits from Paris. That rug there. It’s your great-grandmothers when she went to India with her family at only age eleven. Once I got sick on it because of your father’s precious wine made me incredibly sloshed, and an hour crying and trying to clean it up before you found me covered in vomit and alcohol and spilled cleaner.” Her arm wiped her cheeks dry. Then her hand raised with an extended finger. “You taught me how to ride a winged horse right out on the lawn. None of it happened? Not a thing? We don’t even like each other. No, no. We hate each other. How. How can we mean nothing to each other when we’re the only thing that makes sense? The only two people in Hogwarts that exceled so much in class that we studied subjects never taught there before. We did that. We made that happen. And we only did that together, because we mean something.”  
Anger and despair rose together when she dug through her sweaters and revealed a golden strand with a large ruby hung in the center. “See this? You gave this to me for Christmas. It was the first thing your father ever gave your mother during their courtship, and it was the first thing you ever gave to me.”  
That necklace instantly struck him.   
“Where did you get that?”  
She sniffled and shuddered. “I just told you. You gave it to me.”  
All he knew to do was grab Granger’s hand and pull her through the house until he reached a small closet filled with jewelry. Ancient family lines kept similar rooms to hold precious treasures of their ancestors. Many pieces of jewelry flowed down the generations being given as gifts and worn at special occasions.   
The room was clean and pristine. Every piece of jewelry was stored in a special place, fitted for the piece specifically. Draco searched the glass globes until he found the one he wanted.  
“Reducto.”  
The glass orb shattered. The jewelry dropped down to the floor.   
He held the necklace gently in his hand. The red ruby displayed just for Granger to see.  
“This is the one that my mother still has,” Draco said carefully.  
_“Still?”_ Hermione gasped. “Your mother is…living?”  
The question turned his blood colder than ice. He froze in place.  
He never thought of his mother’s death. She was the reason he strived to be the wizard he was. There was not a person alive who loved him more.  
“You never knew her. Where you are from, I mean, she is not there, is she?”  
She shook her head and hugged herself tightly. “She died in childbirth.”  
Childbirth.  
Draco struggled to remain composed. Still, his hands shook. He ran one through his hair just to hide their tremor from Granger’s watchful eye. Although, her distress left her unlike her usual self. She fought back tears in silence as he struggled with his own emotions to control. Neither were as observant as they were on a normal day.  
“My mother died because of me. Wow.” He hadn’t meant to say it aloud. It just slipped out. He wished for her to not have heard the whisper of admission.  
Hermione’s soft sobbing breaths stopped in pause. Draco noticed. His gaze shot to hers.  
With the slightest lift of his brow, she shook her head, sadness at her brink once more. It went on back and forth until she finally caved.  
Her voice was rather shaky. “Your mother didn’t die in birthing you, Draco. It was your sister she died with.”  
His mind went blank.  
All thoughts that were in his head the previous moment flushed out with his strangled breath, gone to darkness as the information sank deeper than just his mind. Strands of his fallen heart stabbed at him. Their pokey ends jabbed each beat of his heart as it carried on in its despicable, persistent, pulse.   
Narcissa Malfoy, dead. A sibling, dead. Not only a sibling, but a sister. A sister? He couldn’t imagine his life with another thing to compete with. Some other witch that claimed his parent’s affections just as easily as he did.   
No, it was unthinkable.   
“I beg your pardon?”  
Hermione wiped her palms against her cheeks. “It was too early. She bled too much. Neither of them made it.”  
Draco was taken aback, to say the least. Words failed him. What there was to reply to such a statement was not anything he ever prepared for.  
The two moved through the motions of their bodies, lost in thought and reality.   
Tears finally stopped their descent down Granger’s cheeks. She gained control of her breath, so that she no longer made him so incredibly tense. Draco kept even with her pace during their walk. She knew her way through the Manor just as well as he did, it seemed. She moved with fluid grace under her robes as they traversed back toward the main part of the house.  
As a quiet observer, Draco dug through his memory in search of what kind of answer might explain the current situation. What kind of magic brought her there? What should he do to riddle her away? _How on Earth did Hermione Granger ever fall in love with him?-_  
She stopped in a huff and sighed deeply. “What do we do?”  
Draco suddenly realized that she expected an answer. From him.   
“Don’t look at me, Granger. You got yourself here,” he said with a shrug. “You can get yourself home.”  
“But I don’t know how I got here!” She exclaimed.  
He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Well neither do I. It isn’t my fault you’ve come. I didn’t send for you.”  
“Let’s just find Lucius. He’ll know what to do.”   
Her tone implied it was an obvious statement. The hilarity was lost on him.   
“My father? Are you mental? He’ll kill you if he finds you here.”  
“But why?”  
He deadpanned. “Because of the homicidal terrorist that demands your blood upon sight.”  
She was not amused. Her arms crossed tightly against her chest.  
“Honestly.”  
“Have you forgotten about someone, Granger? Hm? The Dark Lord is not a fan of Harry Potters. Not one of yours either.”  
“Who?” She said, exasperated. “Who are they?”   
Draco let a moment of emotion slipped through. He laughed. It was deeply genuine, from the belly, the first in many years.  
“You mean to tell me, that, you don’t know who the Dark Lord is? There is no Dark Lord that you know.”  
She shook her head furiously. “No. Never. Now tell me who that is!”  
“The Dark Lord? Voldemort? Thomas Riddle? Any of those ring a bell?”  
Fingers pulled and pinched at the ends of her curls. They turned to frayed mess. Gentle waves turned to the frizzy brush the longer she tugged at them in her discontent.  
The flesh of her bottom lip was punished, too. She chewed at it endlessly.  
Her nose scrunched in a cute little wrinkle. “Is he of some significance?”  
“Significance? He’s only the wizard taking over the entire bleeding world.” Draco scoffed. “Are you seriously telling me that you don’t know of Lord Voldemort?”  
“Of course not,” she said. “There is no such wizard. None that I’ve ever heard of.”  
“Nonsense.”  
“t’s not nonsense. It is the truth.” Her arms twisted around her body in a straight jacket of her own control. “What would this Voldemort person matter to us? Why would that stop us? In any place, yours or mine. I knew the moment I met you that we would be forever in each other’s lives. I love you, body and soul, magic and all. There is no way that we know one another and aren’t in love. It’s just not possible. No. I refuse to accept that.”  
They were out in the middle of his home. One that he was not convinced was not filled with listening ears. Invalid information was not amused with indifference by the Dark Lord. Slaughter would come. The wizard carried an edge for violence like a coin purse, everywhere he went, ready to whip it out at a moment’s notice.  
He had to do something.  
It was the middle of the night. Who would take her? Who would take her without questions, not confused? She talked about things that never happened. No one would believe the smartest witch of the age didn’t know who the darkest, most terrifying wizard the world had ever seen was. There was no answer to riddle it out.  
He sighed. Two hands stretched his cheeks downward.   
“Bad news then,” she murmured.  
“Pardon?”  
Her eyes were downcast. She refused to meet his gaze and ignore his obvious efforts to make her do so. The play, he did not have the time. Draco grabbed ahold of her bottom jaw, brought her forth to his gaze and forced her brown eyes into his grey moons. Silver planets that delved deep into her mind, farther than he’d ever sought in another human being.  
There, in the silence, in the moment, Granger opened the tough exterior of her shell for his curious eyes. The raw power of her gaze. She trembled in his hand, not in fear. He saw goosebumps pucker her flesh down the empty length of her arms.   
“There are cloaks in there.” He pointed to a nearby closet. “You can use one.”  
She forced a sympathetic smile. “I remember.”  
Yes. Of course, she remembered. She knew everything. It was like she was in his mind witnessing everything he thought before he did, knowing each emotion before it passed through him.   
He watched her select a school robe with a Slytherin badge embroidered in green and silver. It was deliberate. She saw the crest of the serpent and slipped her arms through the sleeves, tightened it against her body and inhaled in the scent. Her shoulders dipped when she returned.   
Granger. Leave it to the one witch to disrupt his life in blissful ignorance.   
Salazar, he hated it.  
“You can stay here for the night. Can’t solve this problem tonight, can I? I’m knackered.”  
She followed quietly behind as he headed for a guest suite down in the rarely used end of the house. No one would find her there.   
“Draco, you didn’t answer my question.” Her voice was a soft whisper.  
Time. He needed a little time to process things, fully.  
He waved dismissively. “In the morning.”  
Draco pushed forward, ready to be done with the evening of her when he noticed her steps weren’t behind him. He turned on toe, question on his features, an open expression he allowed. There was no one to criticize him for it, except the strange Hermione. And that was a more pressing matter.  
“You’re taking me to…”  
“Yes?”  
Her bottom lip flattened beneath her bite. “It’s just that, well, I, um.”   
“Out with it, Granger. I don’t have all night,” he spat.   
He was cold, out of bed, alone, exhausted as all hell, and confused a great deal more. The interaction needed to end. Time. He needed time. All the sashaying around ideas he’d never considered in his wildest of daydreams and nightmares left him unprepared in reactions and emotion. Just one thing too far and he’d land himself farther into the allure of another world, another Granger, one that he assumed made the other Draco Malfoy incredibly happy by the way she was familiar with him.   
A bit of the bushy curls was brushed behind her ear. “It’s just that you usually put me in the suite next to yours. To keep me close, you know.”  
“I’m not your Draco.” He said it to remind himself more than warn her.   
But the idea tainted his thoughts as he traveled back to his own suite. A witch he kept close within his house. He gave her priceless family heirlooms. That was a practical commitment itself. That Draco intended Granger to be his future wife, his beloved.   
What was so special about Granger that the other Draco liked close?   
He supposed she was cute. Cuter than average. Her hair was not so bushy, and her annoying tone was not so evident when she spoke. Over the years, Granger had grown into the features of a slender, young woman. She was a bit short for him. He towered over her like a statue. Surely, that was not attractive to the other one of him. He had to see the same flaws as he: short, bossy, know-it-all, bleeding heart.  
There was one that stung when it entered his mind. _Muggleborn._   
Something made the other Draco overlook it. Some all-important thing that he could not see. And whatever it was, he had to find it before they found a way to send her back to her place, so that he might better protect himself against the wiles of the Gryffindor witch.  
Draco glanced behind his shoulder in the dark of the hall. That Granger looked all the same as the one he knew. She had the same round eyes, like a puppy’s, when they looked at something with interest or love. She looked at him like that. Her eyes twirled over him. It took a moment before she’d recognize something different, something unlike the Draco she loved, and would look away with a splitting pain across her face.  
It was not too difficult to understand the deep connection she had to him. Not him him. The other him.  
“Perhaps you should call me Malfoy to keep us differentiated,” he said.  
“I can tell the difference, thank you very much.”   
She did it again. Her arms crossed her chest in a type of dissatisfaction with one hip popped to the side. A forced look of anger brought her brows real close and pushed her lips downward. It almost looked cute.  
This Granger was a cub compared to the lioness he was used to.  
He chuckled with all attempts to swallow back his smile. “Try as you might, you can’t convince me you’re angry. I know an enemy better than I know a friend. Granger’s anger looks different.”  
The stance was dropped immediately. The hip tucked back underneath her weight. Forced anger was replaced with a bit of relief.  
“I’m sorry. I can only be annoyed. Not angry. I’m still so in love with you.”  
Draco swallowed. An audible gulp to his ears.  
The knob of his door trembled against his hand, or, as he soon realized, vice versa. “I can assure you that I am quite different from the Draco you know.”  
Her eyes flickered to the door handle. A bit of play came to her iris’. “I can see that.”  
They entered his personal suite. He closed the doors behind them as she wandered deeper into the large room, eyes fixed above her head. It was only a mural of a Quidditch pitch. She’d seen something a million times at Hogwarts.   
A few wards were placed against his door. If his parents returned home sooner than planned, they’d be protected. It was better than them stumbling upon her within the home, he decided. She had to stay close. To his great disappointment. Great, _great_ , huge disappointment.   
He interrupted her quiet observation. “How does it compare?”  
There were few people Draco felt equal to; his future self was one of them.  
“Well.” She cleared her throat. “His suite is a planetarium. Every single constellation and star and distant planet shine down from the ceiling and the walls. The navy blue walls make a good backdrop for the spell. Your father created it, you know. To comfort you as a boy when you missed your mother.”  
She sighed and ran her fingers across the dense curtains. “You used to sneak me in after your father retired so that we might spend the night under the stars, together. The rug was bewitched to feel like grass. There was wind, too. It felt like we were outside beneath a real night sky, kissing under a blanket of brilliant stars.”  
“So I’m a hopeless romantic,” he observed. “The other me, that is.”  
A ghost of a smile curled her lips in a single beam of moonlight. The hum of contentment escaped them.  
“Yes. For me you always have been.” She chuckled through a smile. “Though I did hear that once as a little boy, you bought a girlfriend a new toy that you wanted, so that you’d enjoy playing with her. You couldn’t have been more than five years old. A little tyke. Your father raised you better than that. He loved your mother very much and made sure that you saw just how a woman deserved to be treated when you found yourself in love.”  
A bead of sweat dripped down Draco’s spine.   
For Pansy’s birthday, he’d given her tickets to the World Cup of Quidditch. They went together where he had a decidedly better time than she did. He frowned. That did not paint him in a flattering light. The other Draco was thoughtful toward a witch with whom he held feelings for, not treated her as a burden as Pansy often said she felt like.   
In all honesty, it was because she was one. She whined and complained. Every waking minute of the day, she demanded to be by his side, in his business, controlling his actions. It drove him mad. He called her horrible things sometimes.  
Draco suddenly felt ashamed of his behavior. All because there was another Draco Malfoy that was better.  
He gritted his teeth. “Right. Let’s just go to sleep. I’m sure he’ll want you returned in the morning.”  
She quietly agreed and ducked her chin low as he situated a bed for her on the floor. Her soft thanks sent a chill down his spine. No matter how warm he was nestled beneath his comforter, it didn’t shake loose. Not when her breaths were slow under the guise of sleep, nor when she moaned out his name in a dream.   
Draco remained frigid in the dead of night. So much so, he had to leave. He had to put some distance between him and the other him’s fiancé.   
He strolled through the empty halls of Malfoy Manor. The silent calm felt all wrong. It was all wrong. The world was so different now. How did the Manor remain all the same?   
There was a girl in his suite who loved him with all her heart, in a way that he didn’t feel was possible. She looked at him and didn’t see black hate. No darkness shrouded him to create a boogeyman. That witch didn’t know every mistake against him. He was good and loved by a witch much more loved and good.  
He was swallowed up into a vortex of self-pity and frustration at the intrusion of his life, that he physically stopped to shake them out of his head so some much needed clarity rushed back in.   
It did not.  
The obsession of another life kept gnawing at him. Its teeth sank deep to his heart when he thought of all the good times that Granger and him had together. He had a father who loved him and cherished him like a blessing no matter what. He even mourned the loss of that Narcissa and a child that she failed to give life to. All of it. It was a life he felt he deserved.  
There was no Lord Voldemort, nor blood purity by the sound of it. He was still a Malfoy, rich, handsome, and charming as ever, with the freedom to do as he pleased. That brought him endless happiness. That brought him Hermione Granger.  
“Stop,” he commanded himself. It echoed throughout the manor. “Stop it. It’s wrong. It’s Granger. She’s filth, remember?”  
Over and over he spoke of the words that kept his emotions for her at bay.  
Ever since he met the annoying know-it-all Gryffindor, he found himself in absolute hatred of her. She acted better. She ignored him at all times, never allowed her friends to engage with him, even if it was for a bit of fun dueling. For a muggleborn, she walked like the bloody Queen, crown perched atop her head and all. She didn’t share fame. She took all the top marks for herself. Did she ever notice he was right behind her in every single class?  
That Granger brought forth the rage. It made him ball his hands to fists and pound against the walls.   
The beautiful, smart, ever beloved, Hermione Granger. He couldn’t stand it.  
A pop of apparition burst near. Draco dropped his arms instantly.  
“Is masters alright?” The elf asked with its eyes to the floor.  
He sighed. “Yes. Be advised, I have a guest in my suite. I’m to be notified immediately if my parents return. Do you understand?”  
The elf nodded. “Who is master’s visitor?”  
No way. It was mad. The elf wouldn’t believe that she just came to him out of nowhere.  
But what did it matter? He was the master, wasn’t he?  
“I found her in the conservatory. She’s from a different place than here,” Draco explained. “It’s Hermione Granger. But not the one we know. A different one. A better one.”  
“Masters found her!” The elf exclaimed in a sudden emotion.  
“Found her?” He barked. “You brought her here?”  
The elf cowered at his master’s voice. He quaked at the knees. They clicked each pass near the other.  
“I beggings your pardons, master.”  
“Where? Where did you find her?”  
“In elf magic. I was apparating to clean the mistress’ parlor when I saw the young Miss Granger in the magic. She called out my name. ‘Taz’. My name! Hermione Granger knows my name. So, I bringed her here to help. She asked for some tea, and when I came back, she was gone.”  
Draco rubbed his cheek. How would a witch end up in elf magic? Just what the bloody hell did Granger do in her spare time?  
“I want you to attend to her while she’s here,” Draco instructed. “Keep her away from my parents. Make no sign of her known in the house.”  
“Yes, master.”  
The rest of the night passed without incident. Draco returned to his suite where he slept soundly, dreamed of things that were not of Hermione Granger, and awoke with a renewed sense of himself. He was not any other person than himself. A different life did not matter. His world was all the same. A witch would not change that fact.   
He was stronger than that.  
That was until he noticed that Granger’s bed of blankets on his floor was opened and empty. He leapt to his feet.   
Had she been stolen in the night? Voldemort would have killed him if it had been him to enter. It must have been his parents. They took her and killed her to cover the trail back to him.  
She should have called out to him. Cried. Shouted his name. Something!  
That night before he fell asleep, he’d sworn her off for good, ready to send her back to her dreamland, but now he knew that she was worth much more than that. She mattered. Draco would have protected her.  
“Taz!” Draco shouted.  
It took a second for the elf to respond. He popped into the room with an overladen tray of breakfast delights. There were warm steaming sticky buns, little French pastries of delicate dough topped diced fresh fruits, an array of toast with poached eggs, thick sliced ham, crisp hash brown potatoes. There were four glasses. Two were filled with water, the other two with vibrant orange juice. In addition, there was tea, sugar, and cream.  
For how little the elf was under that tray, Taz supported the weight rather effortlessly. He transfigured a tray stand and set the silver platter of food up on proud display.   
“I brought all the foods Miss Granger requested,” Taz announced.  
Draco doubted it highly since Hermione Granger was a fragile little being. It was enough food to feed a werewolf, not a witch.   
The door of the loo creaked open. There was the witch now, alive and well, freshly showered. She wore a jumper of his and the same pair of denim jeans from the night before. Her eyes ignited with delight at the sight.  
“Oh, Tazzy. It is perfect. Thank you.”  
A giant blush crossed the elf’s flesh as he bowed out, ready to leave.  
True to the nature of the Gryffindor, she wrapped the creature into a hug. “You’re so accommodating. I hope I haven’t caused too much trouble.”  
“No trouble, miss,” the elf said. “Always happy to help the likes of you, Miss Granger. Tazzy’s been told of you by his mother.”  
“Your mother?” Draco sneered.  
Granger patted the creature on the head. “Tazzy’s mother is one of the elves at Hogwarts, Draco. She tends the Slytherin dormitory. You ought to know that. She’s the reason your suits are always pressed.”  
He curled his upper lip in a bit of a snarl. “She is?”  
The elf was waved away, but not before he was thanked yet again.  
“Honestly. Have you never asked of your elves before?”  
“Course not. He’s not my friend. He’s my elf. I don’t care how he’s faring in the summer heat. I just want him to clean my room and fetch my broom when I feel like a fly.”  
A pastry mounded with fresh cut peaches fell from Granger’s grasp. Draco waved his wand quickly. The juice and sugar were removed from the fibers of the rug before the stain set.  
Her lips stayed fixed in a frown.   
Draco noticed. “Shocked I’m not your prince charming now?”  
“A bit,” she answered honestly. “I’ve just never heard you sound like Pansy Parkinson before. It was disarming.”  
“You know Pansy?”  
She nibbled on the chewy edge of a sticky bun. “You’ve been chums since childhood. Of course, I know her. Merlin forbid.”  
Draco seated himself on the floor in a similar fashion as her as they proceeded to enjoy their meal. He drank his tea. She stuffed her face with an entire sticky bun, pastry, and a few giant gulps of juice. It was a spectacle to watch.   
The large tray suddenly didn’t seem so large. He added things to his plate before Granger added them to hers and were never seen again. His eyes grew larger with each passing second.  
He’d thought her a witch, not a werewolf in disguise.  
“You know she’s got quite the crush on you. Always has,” Hermione commented as she swirled her tea. “She does just about everything she can do to drive us apart when I’m around. Be warned. If she hasn’t tried to do something like that with you, she’s plotting it. She hates sharing. Especially you. Her Draco toy.”  
He shuddered. The tea turned burnt on his tongue.  
Her features quirked. “What is it?”  
Draco swallowed his mouthful quickly. “My teas gone stale.”  
She grabbed his teacup and stole a small sip, then shook her head. “Tastes fine to me.”  
“Must be me then,” he answered blandly.   
Her hands gripped her own tea tightly. Pale fingers against eggshell white ceramic. She didn’t have painted nails. Their natural pink and white was eye catching enough. The growth of her nails tapped around the rim.  
She watched him quietly, the lull in her breakfast carnage. Draco picked his pastry to smaller pieces, nibbled them, and finally voided the effort altogether. He sighed at the crumbled mess atop his plate, the remnants of a breakfast that most would spend good money on. Not that it mattered. He had Galleons to spare in the millions.   
“Are you not hungry?”  
He scrunched his lips. “No. But I’d hate to stop your breakfast smorgasbord.”  
Her face turned solemn. “Uh, oh. What’s wrong?”  
“Nothing,” he snapped.  
“You’re lashing out. Clearly I’ve said something that upset you.” Both hands set the teacup back to the platter. “Was it Pansy? I know her crush has made you uncomfortable.”  
“Who said I’m uncomfortable? I’m not uncomfortable.”  
Granger’s eyes bulged. “So. It is Pansy.”  
He hated the way she looked at him. Pity, and interest mixed with a bit of hurt. They each picked a place on her face to make their camp, and no matter how hard he tried to ignore them, they haunted him.   
Her lips sloped in a small frown. _Pity._  
She tilted her head forward, to one side as any eager listener would. _Interest._  
Then there was the sad gleam in her eye that caught most of his attention. _Sadness._  
Draco Malfoy prided himself on his ability to read a person. He observed people as a piece of living study for his mind. Their behaviors were noted. Their likes and dislikes easily identified, kept in his memory alongside all the information he learned from their words. The biggest tells were not in what they said, so he kept only the memory of the conversation at hand in his mind so that he might recall the expression on their face when they spoke.   
Hermione Granger was a quick study, a creature of habit. She loved books and the library, and often reread books with a smile as if she was reacquainted with an old friend. It was a rare time she was caught without a jumper on. Her words were chosen carefully, after her mind thoroughgoingly chewed on them a while, and delivered with caution. Conversations were a verbal joust for her. Fun. A different side of the bookworm emerged when engaged in vibrant debate of topics that ranged in a wide variety, most often from books or information gained from others she’s learned from.   
The Gryffindor Princess, as was her name within Hogwarts, was the embodiment of her house. Emotions were quick to her. She let herself be overcome with the strong ones, and let the little ones slowly eat away at her until she exploded with them, too. The witch was fiery. Unstable.   
It was unappealing news to spend time with an unstable person. He knew the Dark Lord was unstable, unpredictable, and full of emotion. If he hadn’t perfected the art of deception and secrecy, there was a chance he would have been in Gryffindor.   
Why would the other Draco want that in a prospective mate?   
“Pansy is irrelevant,” he stated firmly.  
Hermione raised an eyebrow. “Interesting.”  
He exhaled in distaste. “What now?”  
“I suspect that she is not so irrelevant as she is…relevant.” She drummed her fingers along the edge of the platter. The glasses of water clinked together in rhythm. “And since you are not with me to keep her at bay, she must be loose in your life.”  
Ugh. She was too smart to fool.  
He ran his fingers through his hair and mumbled, “You could say that.”  
Had he fully thought out the current course of action, he would have refrained from putting himself in a bind. A repeat of Granger’s emotional meltdown was the opposite of what he wanted.  
She gasped. “You’re… _with_ her?”  
With her was a bit of an overstatement. They were together in an equal amount of effort. She exercised her control over his life while he did his best to make her irate so that she might leave him alone. It was not emotional, nor attached. Pansy Parkinson was not the future Malfoy mistress. He did not want her that much.  
“Oi. Don’t blame me. Things are different here. Pansy was the only option I had,” he said. “I couldn’t go another year without a girlfriend. I’m the most eligible in the castle. Imagine if I couldn’t get a girlfriend. I’d never hear the end of it.”  
“It might mean that you have standards, better than the common garden snake.”  
He chuckled. “That is a bit backhanded for you. Sure you’re not a Slytherin?”  
“Didn’t I tell you who I hobnob with?” She smirked. “He’s quite the prat.”  
“So much for beloved,” he mumbled as he came to stand. “I ought to write that other Draco a note on how you see him.”  
It was fun to watch Granger backpedal over her words. Her eyes struggled to take over her face in horror.   
“Oh, no.” Her lips fell. An awkward face twisted into mortification. The sight was hilarious to him. “My Draco isn’t so sensitive. I didn’t mean to offend you.”  
Sensitive? Is that what she saw him as? A whiny little schoolgirl who couldn’t cope with mean words?!  
His jaw clicked in place. “As if a mudblood could offend me.”  
There was a humming electricity in the air. Draco prepared himself for retaliation at the end of her wand since she was a Gryffindor, and quick with a spell or two. Not that he knew for sure. She was never baited into a duel with him.   
It was a lie to pretend he hadn’t wondered what it would be like to fight with the witch, wand to wand.   
A battle of the best, he thought. A way to dethrone the perfect little thing.  
He rested his hand close to his side. It was only a moment’s reach away from his trusted wand.   
Any moment now, she’d find her rage that was so easily roused. After all the tension over the years and the yet confusing place she put him in, a fight was what he needed to clear it all out. A duel was a high. It gave thrills, chills and a changed mind. If he beat her, there was not a doubt in his mind that he would move past all the difficult emotions buried in his chest, protected by a cage and hardly thought of, lest another ever gain the upper hand on him and go searching for a key.  
She was not his.   
Granger and Malfoy did not mix.  
Draco stood there in anxiety as time dragged on. Why didn’t she reach for her wand? It was right there. He saw it. She knew it was there, too.  
“What are you waiting for? Curse me! Hit me. Do something to me. Don’t just ignore me.” He finally exploded.  
She looked up at him, still on the floor near the breakfast platter, with curiosity etched there. He was equally confused and curious by the response.  
It felt amazing to have said it. Years of withheld rage toward complete indifference finally capped into one spout.   
He quickly calmed himself, settled back down to the floor where he’d just came from, and asked, “What?”  
“What is a mudblood?” She questioned.  
His brows jumped. “You don’t know what mudblood means?”  
She shook her head. “My Draco has never called me that before.”  
Of course, he hadn’t.  
“The better Malfoy wouldn’t,” Draco said bitterly. “I’m not that wizard.”  
“What does it mean?”  
He shook his head. “The other Draco wouldn’t want you to know.”  
Hermione crossed her arms. It was entirely adorable. Her bottom lip puffed so far out that he wanted to drag his finger down the brilliant red flesh.   
“Well, _I_ do. Tell me what it means. The other Draco would tell me. He tells me everything.”  
He scoffed. “I highly doubt that.”  
It was not a challenge. He did not want her to prove it. More than anything, he hoped it was not true. There were a many dark things in his mind at any time, and interests that were too much for the sweet little Gryffindor to endure. Hermione Granger was too pretty white to be tainted with his black. Coal black. Bitter darkness.   
There was not a doubt, not a single doubt in his mind, that the other version of himself, more properly made and supported with a loving father with a long absent mother, would allow his beautiful, talented, virgin white beloved to be tainted with any bit of darkness that resided within him. No. Even he wouldn’t permit such staining.  
“We should focus on sending you home,” Draco stated evenly, though his heart started to beat in defiance. Traitor heart. It wanted her close. It wanted to be revealed to another that might understand him deeper, see past what he showed to the world. “You might ask your betrothed when you return home.”  
“Oh, I will. Don’t you doubt it,” she spat as she wiped her hands down her jeans. “If not I’ll be coming back here.”  
“How did you even get ‘here’? Taz said he found you in the house magic. What were you doing there?”  
Hermione brushed her curls away from her face. “Um. I was working on a spell.”  
Spell creation was not encouraged at their age. Especially at Hogwarts. Why, his own father kept him practiced with only recorded and tested spells, ones that worked without consequence. There were plenty of spells that were unstable enough to fire back at the caster. Untested, created by mistake, with the best of intention, delivered with horrid results.  
It was an interesting prospect. He’d been intrigued with the idea for a while. It was the one stage on which Harry Potter did not stand as lead.   
Draco clicked his tongue. “You were creating your own spell. That is something you know how to do.”  
“Yes,” she answered cautiously. “Draco and I were taught by Professor Snape. An advanced class just for the pair of us.”  
Advanced classes at Hogwarts were unheard of. No professor taught subjects outside what had been taught for millennia. He learned subjects of forbidden magic from hired tutors, privately employed by his parents on the off season. Since the Dark Lord rose though, he hadn’t the appetite for knowledge.   
There were books at Hogwarts that taught about spell creation. He’d toyed with the idea of learning the skill himself in the library at school but having a girlfriend had proven more demanding than he’d planned. Pansy kept his library time to a minimum. She required his attendance for stupid social gatherings around the castle with other Slytherins, some Ravenclaws on occasion. Education was not at the forefront of her mind like it was his. Spell creation would be a worthy weapon in his arsenal. His father might not like it, but Draco thought it was a perfect idea.  
Still. The safety of the skill was virtually nonexistent. He needed open space, protective enchantments, wards strong enough to repel wandering students, perhaps spies even. Of course it required a vast amount of books quite larger than one student was permitted to lend from the library. Such space would require lots of searching through Hogwarts archives of blueprint layouts to find the perfect, forgotten space tucked away for him…   
Draco sighed. That was so much work. Timing was not ideal in his life. The less stress, the better.  
A professor would aid in all the leg work of it.   
“Professor Snape you say…” He licked his lips. “Just how did you convince him to agree to teaching such a course? He’s not your biggest fan at the best of times. I doubt my skills could make him overlook such a fact unless there was leverage of some kind.”  
Leverage on the Head of Slytherin House was not an easy concept. He had nothing. His life was empty. He dedicated his entire life to the cause of Voldemort and the cleansing of the wizarding world.   
Whatever leverage it was had to be profound, with deep investigation.   
Draco didn’t second guess Granger’s ability to find out whatever she searched for.  
“Don’t be ridiculous, Draco. There is no leverage. He granted my request for extra studies. He’d never deny me. I’m a favorite.” She smiled a ridiculous smile that brought a mouthful of saliva to his tongue. God he could taste his desire. That moment. He wanted to swallow her smile, so innocently delighted, and make it fill his insides. “Professor Snape loves me.”  
The scoff was instantaneous. He couldn’t help it.  
She narrowed her eyes. “You’re always so jealous. One wizard pays me any attention and you get hurtful.”  
“Well if Professor Snape loves you so much, why doesn’t he get you out of this bind?” Draco cried.   
She huffed. The two small nostrils flared wide as a pinch of cherry red overtook the flesh. Dense brown of her eyebrows furrowed together in a single line. Three distinct wrinkles textured her forehead.   
A single finger pointed at him. “I’m here because of you, Draco Lucius Malfoy. I leapt through universes, across timelines, almost got myself trapped in the house magic all for you!”  
“Not for me, you nutter. For the other Draco Malfoy. The one you’re engaged to!”  
“There isn’t a difference in you,” she said. “You’re very much the same man that I love. Very much the same. So much the same that there are moments where I can’t remember if this is home or not.”  
Draco tore his fingers through his hair. Their rough nature pulled strands from his scalp.   
He was losing control. Shouting at Hermione Granger in such heat was turning his mind to other wishes. Ideas of _his_ Granger.   
He took a deep breath, then another. The cinnamon scent of hers. It brought back memories of Hermione Granger, in class, around the castle, when she came close enough she was in his range. That damn bloody scent he hated.  
Why. Why was she here now? Why was she messing things up?  
“Listen, I do not know what you want from me. I don’t. I didn’t bring you here. You weren’t doing a damn thing for _me_. So why don’t you just stop it? Okay? I can’t take this. You’re not mine. Not even close. So, leave me alone.”  
Away. He had to get away.   
Hermione’s hands clutched at her mouth. Their soft pale flesh a blockade to what emotion was on her face. When he saw the expression, there was no away. There was no away until he knew what it meant. She was not one to react over nothing.  
Well, she was a Gryffindor, so it was possible, but he knew it wasn’t.   
She knew something. She witnessed something that made her react.  
“What,” he spat, “now?”  
“You’re shielding yourself from something. Something you won’t allow yourself to feel.”  
He glared. “You can’t possibly know that from a look!”  
“Who is Voldemort, Draco? Why does he not want us together?” Her eyes blinked up at him filled with question.   
“Because you’re a mudblood. You’re born of Muggles. You are filthy. A mistake. Your magic is a flaw in our world. You’re stealing what’s ours and breaking all the beauty of magic by tainting it with your existence,” he cried. “Voldemort hates tainted blood. I’m pure blood. You know what that means? My family has been made up entirely of witches and wizards. Not a drop of muggle blood has entered this house. That makes me special. That makes me better than you! And he knows it. He wants all of your kind exterminated. The real power back to the ones who’ve earned it.”  
He expected sadness. She was the sad the whole time since she arrived, and he expected that to continue when he explained just how undesirable she was to him. It had made him sad to say it.  
Granger was not so bad without Potter and Weasley around. She was tolerable and nice to look at. Her intelligence wasn’t so annoying outside of class. He warmed to the idea of her around.  
His reading was rather shallow. It came up with a blinding oversight.  
Her jaw snapped closed. Nostrils flared and cherry red. Those big inviting eyes narrowed in his direction, piercing and filled with emotion.  
 _Rage._  
“That’s the reason you hate me? Because of my blood?” Her voice was a mighty roar. It echoed down through the dark emptiness of the Manor in the largest disruption of silence it’d ever heard. Those who roamed the halls spoke in whispers and hisses, soft and beneath the flow of the home. Granger just ripped Malfoy Manor a new one. “Of all the idiotic, entitled, pathetic excuses…You, Draco Malfoy, are a sorry excuse of a Black. They were an ancient noble family with honor and a sense of morality. Which is more than I can say for you. You. You pathetic cockroach! And you’re right; you’re not my Draco. He isn’t so ugly as to be so shallow. He was raised better.”  
She stormed off through the dark of the Manor only lightly punctured by the morning light. Her steps vibrated the floor.   
Draco didn’t know what to do. Any response that formed was laced with venom and not truthful. At first, he was greatly insulted by her insult to his heritage. He was born of two powerful, strong family trees in all of wizarding England. What did a stupid girl know about honor and morality?  
He was raised to be a shining figure of the Malfoy family. There was no room for individuality when the whole world looked to them as a beacon for class and wealth and utmost respect. Draco was permitted whatever he wanted in the world, but in the back of his mind, he knew that his parents loved him most when he emulated their image. So, he took to hobbies they expressed interest in. He thrived in school. His studies were the most important. His father was so proud of that.   
Malfoy Manor was about pride. The very foundations were elaborate and more expensive than most homes in the southern half of the country.   
That was what he was apart of: a family that weathered the ages with the same power and grace as their ancestors. No other wizarding family could make that claim. Not to the extent that a Malfoy could.  
The portraits could boast of their bloodline and to whom heard of it would know their truth. It gave a sharper venom when they spoke. Who could stop them? They made the wizarding world what it was today. They were a forefront in all businesses and government elected positions. They held a standing in the community, an unsurmountable tower that weathered the test of time.   
Malfoys were permanent.   
Draco rubbed his temples as he walked the halls of the Manor. A battle raged on beneath his flesh. Of which path was the right one.   
The Dark Lord was not right. He recognized the flaw in the wizard. When he returned to flesh and descended back to the depths with his followers, Draco saw the fearsome hate below the surface, not a simple righteous cause of breeding with muggles, but utter hatred of those who opposed him. But was supporting those who Draco strongly disliked the right thing?   
He groaned and wished for another option. A getaway island paradise to weather the war. He’d greet the victors with respect. He’d swear to do that. As long as he didn’t have to decide. A decision that ended in his death quite possibly, or imprisonment. Neither felt like freedom.   
Granger. She was who demanded his attention. Whatever timeline she emerged from, not a single death eater would hesitate to kill her and quite possibly him for associating.   
Where the bloody hell would she go?  
He checked the library first. For obvious reasons. It was Granger he sought.  
When she wasn’t there, he checked the three parlors, the drawing room, the piste, the music room. None yielded his missing witch.   
“Bullocks!” He shouted. “Taz.”  
The elf popped into his presence a moment late. It bowed its head. “Yes, Masters?”  
“Find Granger on the property,” he instructed. “Don’t approach her. Just find her and return.”  
It took the elf a full minute to locate her on the property. That was because she was all the way at the back of the property in a gazebo amongst the rose garden. It was a long walk from the Manor out there. He opted for the walk rather than the apparition. The quiet was welcome. Warm flowing air, nice albeit cloudy sky above his head. Roses in full bloom scented the entire estate. Their lovely perfume was the memory of childhood as he flew his horse or broom out over his home.   
He pictured Granger there with him, on his winged horse. She said they learned right out here. The Granger he knew detested flying and heights. She gripped the railings very hard when in the stands of the Quidditch Pitch.   
An ounce of pride blossomed upon his chest. Draco found it in the fact that she trusted him enough to ride with him. That was monumental.   
Well, he was very masterful in the verbal arts. It was possible that he convinced her against her better judgement for a single fly and then made her feel so secure and confident in his flying that she enjoyed it. That was believable.  
The gazebo was hidden amongst the numerous rose bushes in fully bloomed to the sun. Their pink and red and white hues blended together as a single, flowing mass of flowers. It extended very far into the back of the estate.   
Admittedly, Draco hadn’t gazed at his mother’s flowers in a long time. They were her pride. She tended them herself.  
She asked him often to tour the gardens with her, but his interest was elsewhere more often than not. He left her on walks alone through their winding paths, to be lost in an afternoon all on her own, without her only son to give her company in the few months he was home.   
The black wood gazebo had a single bench centered in its hold, outlooking the lawn he’d just trekked and the Manor beyond that. It was brilliant in the hazy light of a summer sun. The lawn was vibrant. Its true color extracted in the light.   
A frown came to his face when he saw the darkness of the Manor. It was not aglow as it was in summer. A cloud hanged overtop of it. Not a shred of light touched the roof. The unshakeable cold. It was Voldemort’s emergence within it’s halls that turned it frigid. He felt the change. It was no longer that happy place he remembered it. Rather, a museum of despair and discontent.   
Discontent? That was laughable. Why would they be so unhappy? Their family vaults were plump full. The manor was brilliant and well maintained. He was an exceptional student and Quidditch player. His family had everything it ever wanted. Why were they so greedy for more?  
“Listen Granger – “.  
“I came out here looking for our tree swing,” she said as she stared at her clasped hands rested in her lap. “It was always our place away from it all. And instead, there are all these rose bushes.”  
Her eyes filled with tears. Their spill was soundless as she sat within in a haven of lovely rose bushes on the lawns of one of the most beautiful homes in England. That made him sad.  
He took the seat at her side. The right thing to say was a mysterious next step. What comforted a witch? No, what would comfort her? To say Granger was like other witches was a gross understatement.   
She sobbed quietly for a time. He lost track of how many silent cries she exhaled. Each made him more discontent. He shifted in his seat, which he hadn’t done since he was a child at a boring meeting of his fathers that he insisted on attending to seem more mature.  
His throat felt suddenly dry. He cleared it a few times. The noise caught her attention. Her warm eyes lifted to his face. Heat answered. It blistered beneath her gaze.  
“Are you sad because you miss me?” He asked softly. “The other me, I mean.”  
She shook her head. The red splintered through the whites of her beautiful eyes. Her sadness touched each part of her face. It was a Granger like he’d never seen.  
She sniffed. “I don’t know how I pictured your life without me. Truly. It didn’t matter because you already had me…But your mother. This is not what I imagined with her alive.” A shaky breath left her throat. “The woman you love so much, and worship and miss, is a woman who wouldn’t have let you love me in the first place.”  
Awful sobs started to cascade. They were accompanied with thick streams of tears.   
He shifted once more.  
“I feel so awful for not wanting you to find her,” she croaked. “I don’t want my Draco to see his mother if this is what waits on the other side for him. Hatred. Of me and my kind. I’d lose him. You. And that is something I don’t ever want to imagine.”  
Draco cleared his throat. “I don’t think that would happen. I can’t speak for your Draco, but I can speak for me. My mother is important. I love her with all my heart. Family is the only thing in the world you can depend on and I’ll love her til death.” The drastic frown on her face sped his pulse. It was not having a great effect. His words seemed to torture her further. “But. If things are as you say between me and you, and I’ve gifted you precious things that are important to my family, there is nothing that would make me turn my back on you. You’d be in my heart just as my mother is. But, instead of being an accessory to other plans, it’d be our plans that matter. We would be partners. Me, half of you, and you half of me. My own family. That loyalty is deeper still.”  
An explosion of tears rushed down her face. He almost fell back in his seat, uncertain what he’d said. It was meant to be comforting. Why was she crying?  
He scooted away in case it was him that upset her. But she hopped across the bench with open arms and latched onto him. Her tears smeared across his cheeks as she held him close.   
It was the most intimate embrace he’d had in his whole life. He did not do romance. He did not believe in intimacy. It was a vulnerability he couldn’t afford.  
Granger helped herself to his lap, hugged him tight, and rubbed her face against his as he’d seen puppies do to each other.   
“Oh, Draco. You are in there, somewhere,” she breathed in the sweetest sound.  
The dryness was replaced with thickness. He couldn’t swallow. It stayed at the back of his throat, so he was forced to repeated clear his throat as she held him.  
After a few agonizingly embarrassing minutes, Draco gently broke the suction of her body against his. “We should probably work on getting you back home.”  
The back of her hands dragged across her cheeks. “Yeah, okay.”  
After a quick lunch in which Granger yet again consumed the amount of three wizards, she was ready. They decided the piste was the best place to practice the spell. She explained that she combined a few known spells to find Draco’s mother as a present for him.   
“It was meant to be for your birthday,” she said. “It’s coming up and I wanted it perfected before I told you.”  
“Were you using the house magic?” He asked. “Taz said he found you in the house magic that elves use.”  
She nodded. “I thought it’d take me back in time within the house so that I could bring you with me.”  
“Well maybe try doing the spell again. Maybe it’ll snap you back to your world.”  
Granger swirled her wand over her head as she recited the spell’s words. Nothing happened.   
She was still there. Her hands fell to her hips. “Honestly. That’s exactly how I did it last time.”  
“Do it again,” Draco said. “Focus.”  
The words were said a couple hundred times. Each time she tried a different stance. Her hips shifted back and forth. The wand action was delicately moved and twisted at just a different degree (wand movement was monumental within a spell).   
It became apparent that it was not going to work.  
She had her arms crossed tight. “I can’t believe it. I worked on the spell. I studied everything. I know this is the right way to say it.”  
“Well it’s not working so clearly not!”  
“You’re mad at me?” She stomped her foot.  
“Why do you have to be so damn thoughtful?” He snipped. “Can’t you just be selfish and careless like Pansy?”  
She snorted. “If you meant that as an insult, it backfired because, thank you. I’d rather not be like Pansy.”  
“She’s not the one trapped in a different world so I wouldn’t cast stones if I were you, Granger.”  
“Right. Like Pansy’s stupidity is my fault,” she snipped back. “If she had the inclination, she might have become stuck just as I am.”  
He shook his head. “No. Because unlike a bloody proud Gryffindor, she might have put in place some fail safes, so she wasn’t stuck with no one looking for her!”  
They’d stepped closer, both red faced and equally frustrated. Draco knew his anger wasn’t at her. He was upset it wouldn’t bring her home where a better version of himself waited with worry.   
Draco never loved a person like that. He was unsure it was capable of happening to his heart. But the longer he saw Granger’s personality shine through that wasn’t obsessed with stupid Saint Potter, he liked it. Minorly.  
She was tolerable. Just tolerable. Perhaps, preferable a little. The smallest amount of preferable. So small it was insignificant.   
It was difficult to read her in the current context. He knew when she was sad because of the crying and then there was the stamped-foot-hands-on-her-hips-red-faced anger that he recognized from his own run ins with the witch in his world. But, in a relaxed state where she was comfortable around him, he struggled to understand what she thought.   
His curiosity, his need to know, it reigned over him.  
“I had counted on being able to ask Lucius for help if something went wrong!” She exclaimed. “It's not my fault that your family is suddenly genocidal maniacs.”  
“We’re not all like that,” he bellowed back.   
Perhaps his curiosity wasn’t in total control. There was still his usual indignation toward Granger. A hard habit to shake.  
“Really? Because you’ve tried to start a duel since the moment I got here. You hate the Granger in this world,” she retorted with a pointed finger driven straight at his face. “You’ve not convinced me that you aren’t wanting to end her life – _my life_ – over her birth stance. I see emotion in you. Genuine emotion. But I can’t tell if it is positive or negative. By the murmurings of these portraits, I’d say it is in the negative.”  
Flares of emotions trickled down his spine. _Anger_ at her assumption of him that was so quick and easy to dismiss like the first time he ever met Potter in Diagon Alley. _Pity_ at her entrapment in a world she wasn’t wanted in. _Desire_ when that furious glow came to her eyes. _Worry_ that they might be caught together and thusly punished for it. They all twisted together into one weird, unreadable expression that resulted in his lips against hers.  
At first, it was fire. He felt the tension of his belly uncoil for the first time in years. A spark shot through his heart. It worked double time in his chest. Then came the truly scary one: searching. He searched for something in the embrace that was not there. Their kiss lacked. Something was missing.   
This was not his Granger.  
She pushed away from him in a gentle push. Her eyebrows knitted together.   
His eyes dove deep into her depths. A heat beckoned him further into her gaze, a hunger that he wanted satisfied with all his heart, his belly not full of the attention and love she gave. More than anything, he wanted more.  
A sudden gasp entered the room. “Draco!”  
And it was not from her. Her eyes flickered toward the door with a widen state of shock.   
The tension arrived back a moment later when he saw the two most fearsome creatures alive standing in the door (right behind Voldemort): his parents. They were dressed in their formal outing clothes. His father in black billowing robes, straight platinum hair down his back, a walking stick in his hand. Narcissa Malfoy, his mother, was dressed in emerald. Her light hair was curled in large waves at the ends of her length down her chest. In one hand was a parasol with ivory lace and emerald green. A strand of white Malfoy pearls rested against her neck.  
“Draco,” his father hissed. “What is that thing doing in my house?”  
Granger took in a rattled gasp. He took a protective step in front of her.  
He found his voice. “It’s not what it looks like.”  
The sky-blue eyes of his mother turned to his father, Lucius. She, too, was shocked.  
“Lucius.” Her voice was soft. It would not carry more than a few feet before it became too muddled to understand. A Slytherin trait. “Remember where we are.”  
As if he suddenly remembered the Dark Lord’s usage of Malfoy Manor was unpredictable and all too comfortable for knocking, Lucius slammed his walking stick down to the floor. “Cack!”  
Narcissa was rattled by the outburst. Her hands went to her chest in surprise. The blue eyes widened.  
“My rage is perfectly permitted at the discovery of my son with a mudblood in our own home.”  
A spread of fingers grasped the back of Draco’s arm as he stood. Granger held his shirt with a light grip. The fire of her touch ignited his flesh.  
He had a duty. A duty to himself to ensure she was brought back unharmed.  
“Let us convene within your office and out of earshot,” Draco’s mother said.  
Lucius was clearly filled with rage as he stared at his son, but he nodded his head. Narcissa led the way through the Manor. Draco and Granger were the last of the group. He stayed in front as they walked, in case someone tried to fire a curse to rid themselves of the dilemma. That would be the thing he’d do if presented the same challenge.  
Malfoy Manor sat eerily quiet as the family moved. It was not often that the deadly silence was filled with nothing but tense frustration.  
He glanced back at Granger. She was still too shocked to speak. Her eyes were wild when they met his.   
_Fear._  
Lucius Malfoy’s study was a private place where only his most loyal confidants were taken. There were only a handful of memories that Draco could remember inside the room itself. It was not for children. It was his workspace.  
Lucius was a very private man. He kept his things to himself and his business was not a family matter at all.   
It was a dark room with tall ceilings with tin ceiling tiles. They were intricate with the most detailed enchanted designs. Scenes moved fluidly of little stories within each tile. Candles lined the walls, so a hazy glow lit overhead. Black damask wallpaper cloaked the room in a striking darkness that crept into the soul. Tiffany glass lamps sat perched atop a grand desk in the center of the room. Two bookcases sat behind each of his shoulders when he took his seat behind the desk, tall as the ceiling, filled with dark knowledge. Except the first two rows. Those were filled with law books, magical codes and education books that Draco wasn’t permitted to yet read.  
A decanter was produced from a hidden shelf at Lucius’ side. He produced two glasses. They were both filled with the amber liquid.   
Narcissa grasped one and sipped from it whilst the elder Malfoy drained his in a single gulp.  
Draco and Granger, whom he now started to recall as being named Hermione, stood still in the doorway, uncertain whether they were welcome to sit or if their lashing was to be done center stage.  
It was an odd exchange. Draco and his parents were rather close. Closer than he perceived many families to be. But this was different. A clear barrier was between them. They were on one side, he the other.   
Whatever it was that made their sides be defined brought feelings of insult in Draco’s blood. His fingers clenched tight. For all he’d done for his parents and the one time he stepped out of line, he was regarded so coldly. That was enough for his venom to ooze into his mouth. A spitting biting venom that only those who Draco absolutely despised got to feel.  
“Take a seat.” Lucius motioned toward the two chairs in front of his desk.   
There were only two. And Narcissa hovered above one, intent on taking it.  
“Actually, we’d rather stand,” Draco replied.  
Narcissa’s eyes blazed bright at her husband. He seemed to receive them and their message.  
Lucius poured himself another glass of presumed whiskey before he continued. “Fine.”  
Hermione was close. He felt her breath on his sleeve. The hot moisture infected the fibers and made them limp.   
“If I may, what the bloody hell is going on here, son?” It was his father’s own brand of venom. Much more potent and aged than Draco’s. “Do you know the danger you’ve put us all in by having a mudblood in our house? Not just anyone. This one! One of the ones that the Dark Lords demands be killed.”  
“Father, please.”  
“How can you be so thick, son, as to think that our good favor would sway the Dark Lord’s wrath?” Lucius said suddenly.  
“If you’d just allow me – .” Draco tried to get the words out.  
“You’ve only told us how much you despise the witch,” Narcissa said in her lovely, flowing tone. It was far too sympathetic than he liked. He’d rather his parents scream and yell so that he might fight back. When they spoke so civilly it felt a luring chance to turn back to their ways. It made it difficult to resist. “Is there more to the story?”  
He reigned in his breath. “Not exactly.”  
“Then what the bloody hell is she doing here?” Lucius exploded.  
“Lucius. Watch your tongue,” Narcissa hissed. “A foul mouth is unbecoming.”  
“He’s so different,” Hermione gasped lightly beneath her breath. It was meant for him.  
“I know,” Draco said back.  
Lucius’ eyes narrowed in on her. “What?”  
“She said you’re different,” he responded. “Different than what she’s used to.”  
His father let out a strangled sound that one would make when tossed very suddenly to the ground. The air escaped his lungs without warning. A sign of his shock.  
Draco never saw his father act so irrationally.  
Narcissa, however, was softer in her graces. She stayed calm. At least one adult remained to act accordingly.  
“I beg your pardon?” She said.  
He sighed. “That’s what I’ve been trying to say. This isn’t the Hermione Granger we know.”  
His parents blinked back at him with not a shred of comprehension.  
“There’s another one?” His mother questioned with a bit of doubt in her words.  
“This Hermione Granger is from a different world. It’s like ours, but not. She comes from a world where there is no Dark Lord, there is no blood purity.” He explained with envy in his voice. Salazar, he wished to be there now. “She’s here by mistake. She used the house magic in her world when making a spell and it brought her here by mistake.”  
“The house magic?” Lucius cried. “How’d she have access to the house magic?”  
“Apparently.” And Draco swallowed with this statement he dared next make. It would not be met nicely. “You gave her the access.”  
That resulted in a panicked response of denial and threats of throwing them both into St. Mungos for being loony. His father brought to the edge of madness of discovery of Draco with a witch of less than pure blood was eye-opening. He’d always known that a pureblood witch was for him, but, had he fallen in love with any witch, he expected his parents support. That was their duty to him. The family name was only made tighter by the bonds of love, as their marriage was, not arranged marriages like his own grandfather’s.   
The result gave Draco a more human version of his father, rather than an immortal figure as he’d regarded his father as. He had depended upon his father for everything. His father helped him whenever he needed it. He solved issues that Draco had.  
When Draco was injured by that creature third year, Lucius demanded the creature be destroyed before it hurt more students or gravely injured someone. And when there was mistreatment by a professor turning him into a ferret in front of the entire student body, his father was there to appeal to the Ministry and the board that controlled Hogwarts, as much as Hogwarts was to be controlled.   
It was never said but Draco assumed that his father loved him. And wanted him happy.  
The interaction with Hermione gave Draco another opinion. It was not so flattering.  
Narcissa sat quietly as her husband peaked and came down from his fit. She beheld Hermione with a gentle eye. She wasn’t hateful nor angry at her son’s interaction with a muggleborn witch.   
He was sure he felt Hermione’s awe in his mother’s presence. There was no doubt that she didn’t stare at Narcissa, absorbing every detail. It was all her Draco had. He hadn’t the memory of his mother to depend on.  
His mother regarded her husband finally in his calm state of liquor. “Look at her neck, Lucius.”  
In their time trying to send her back to her world, Hermione’s ruby necklace was left exposed outside his school jumper. It was the necklace that his own mother was given in her young years.  
Lucius raised from his seat. “Those are Malfoy property! Take that off your filthy neck at once.”  
Hermione stepped out from behind Draco’s protection and shook her head. “No. I will not. I was given these by the Malfoy family. You were so proud of your son when he gave it to me. Your eyes gleamed over with tears!”  
The entire family was brought to a stunned silence.  
His father? Crying? She was mad.  
“Really?”  
Her eyes met his. They were swirled with strength and fear. He sensed that she was being courageous despite the clear concern she should feel in their presence.   
She nodded. “He was proud of your choice. This was the first thing he ever gave your mother. It was important that you follow his footsteps.”  
“My dear.” Lucius sighed. “Will you please go ensure that our necklace hasn’t gone missing?”  
“I can.”   
Draco pulled the ruby necklace from his pocket. It glinted in the lazy candlelight. His mother’s open palm leaned forward. He delicately placed it in her grasp.   
He swallowed. “It was the first thing I did to confirm her story.”  
Narcissa held the necklace for her husband to see. “Jewels don’t lie, my dear.”  
Hermione gasped for some odd reason. He looked at her with question. An eyebrow raised.  
“Draco. That’s what he said when he gave her the necklace. She said that her friends weren’t sure he even liked her. And your dad had the necklace in his pocket. He used to laugh about that story. He told it to us all the time.”  
“I’ve never heard that story,” he said.  
Hermione gave him a face. “If your father didn’t repeat it, I’d doubt you’d have asked him.  
Narcissa smiled softly. “So, you are close to the Malfoy family, I assume? You must be if you’ve been given such a precious heirloom.”  
“I am, Mistress.”  
His mother finally took a seat in the black leather chair. She gestured for Hermione to do the same. It was done, although hesitantly, and with much eye contact. He hated the way he liked her attachment to him. It was an endearing sense of security. They hadn’t known each other long but already; she knew that he’d protect her.  
She was right. Before he even understood it, he knew that her trust was rightfully placed in him.  
Hermione shifted in the seat with a musical of leather squeaks accompanied. Her gaze glanced upward at the looming dark figure of his father. A dark look greeted her curiosity and she looked away quickly.  
Draco clenched his jaw. They couldn’t respect him enough to not scare his witch. Unbelievable.   
He cleared his throat. “They aren’t going to curse you. We’re all in a mediation. It’s not proper to curse those in an arrangement like that.”  
“That Volde-gort guy won’t appear right?”   
That brought forth a realization. A sound arose through the silence. It was his father who made the noise. His grey eyes, stern still, met his sons.  
Draco nodded. “There is no Dark Lord where she comes from. No blood supremacy. She doesn’t even know what ‘mudblood’ means.”  
“I figured it out,” she told him.  
“What?” He growled.  
“When Lucius said it, I understood what it meant.”  
Brilliant. They’d ruined Hermione Granger for the other Draco Malfoy. The one unaffected by the blood supremacy nonsense.   
He didn’t know why, but he felt furious with his father. He stared daggers at his father’s face. All his wishes converged on one target. That smug face.  
It was so uncommon for him to be frustrated at his father that Lucius actually reacted with surprise.  
“What is it, Draco?”  
“She didn’t know what it meant. Her Draco didn’t tell her. And I didn’t want her to know either.”  
His father shrugged. “What does it matter? It is just a word. It is better to know what words mean rather than remain ignorant.”  
“It matters to me,” Draco snapped.  
It was difficult to determine why it mattered. It just did.   
Her opinion of him, whatever it was, was rather…important.  
“Don’t tell me you’ve grown fond of the witch in a day, Draco.” Lucius snickered.  
One stern look from his mother silenced it.  
“Lucius. Our son is trying to talk to us,” she said. “Listen.”  
Draco ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m not saying I want to propose or anything. But I’m just saying I like the way it sounds. Her stories of our life without the Dark Lord. With her. They make life seem happy. She makes you happy, Father. She talks about you often. And us. Together. It’s all of my dreams of what I pictured my life might be like. I never wanted it so bad. It was just a distant thought, but now we know. We know it’s possible.”  
Lucius stood from his desk. Strands of hair fell down to his chest. His fists rested against the top.  
“Son. You gravely mistake what is possible,” he said.  
“But it is. We just have to try. Act a little like a Gryffindor and be brave.”  
Hermione gulped very audibly. Her hands gripped the armrest of her chair so much so, her nails made little sounds against the leather. That face of concern across her features like a scar.   
He knew what it was. It was _doubt._  
“What? I can be brave.”  
She licked her lips and tucked her curls behind her ear. “Yes. But you hate it. You detest bravery. You say it lacks the subtly of thought.”  
That was true.   
So, he felt that Gryffindors were too rash. So what? All that meant was that they were too blind, all the time, to play their hand right. A Slytherin, on the other hand, could be brave in a soft way. They could turn. They could be double agents. It was possible to find small ways to undercut Voldemort’s power to prevent him from taking over the entire world.  
Slytherins did bravery better. That’s all.  
“Before we decide what we should do, perhaps, we might address Miss Granger here.”  
Narcissa touched the arm of the witch. Draco’s eyes grew twice as wide. It was considered the greatest mark against a purebloods reputation to lay hands on a muggleborn. Even a muggle. They were dirty little creatures not worthy of touch. Or thought.   
It made it easy to exterminate them.  
“She needs to go back,” Lucius stated. “There is no better option.”  
“What other option could there be?” Draco growled.   
“Now, now. Boys. We have a guest,” Narcissa said in her warning tone. “Remember yourselves.”  
She then turned to Hermione with a sweet smile. “Tell me, darling. How did you come to be in our home rather than yours?”  
He sighed. It was going nowhere fast. “That’s what we were trying to figure out when you two interrupted.”  
His father cocked a brow. “Is that what it was? Things have changed in our time, dear. Our eyes dated from disuse that we cannot distinguish spell casting. Forgive us, son. From where we stood it looked like snogging.”  
A hot blush captured Hermione’s face. She shied out of view from his parents. It was cute. How mortified she was of physical affection with him when clearly they were a very close couple where she came from. They had to snog. Often.   
It was him after all. He loved the witch. And if he planned to marry her, as it was clear he did, he’d not withhold his urges to love her. That was what it was for: his future wife.  
Draco glared at his father with the attempt at frustration rather than the triumph. “I meant that’s what we have been trying to do. She created the spell. And it malfunctioned.”  
“There’s a surprise,” Lucius muttered. “This is why I forbid you from spell creation. Much too dangerous.”  
Little Hermione wiggled in her seat. Her eyes glanced up at Draco with doubt.  
“But your father always thought it was an invaluable skill.”  
Draco rolled his eyes. “That father cared about his son’s mind. You’ll find this one is quite different.”  
Narcissa gasped. “Draco Lucius. That is just not true. We very much care for your mind. We tend it and cultivate it and nurture it with your every desire.”  
“Invaluable, yes. But dangerous. A dangerous skill that is meant for professionals. Not students.”  
“That’s why Professor Snape taught us,” Hermione explained.   
Lucius snorted in a callous bit of hilarity. “I might have known the education reeked of that man. Clearly this is what his skill reaps. Look, dear, Snape’s handywork before our very eyes. So indifferent he let a child create a spell that brought her through realms the most decorated wizards cannot master.”  
It was in his statement he realized that beyond his humor of the great Professor Snape’s failure that it was a great feat the witch accomplished at such a young age. The steel grey eyes widen, ever so slight, the longer it soaked in through his flesh. She was powerful. Much more than he imagined her to be.  
Years at Hogwarts left Draco not surprised by the revelation. She was smart. And resourceful. If she wanted to know it, she made a point to.   
In many ways, Draco was similar. His eyes glazed over with emotion, silent and unnoticed by all except him.   
Hermione Granger, the troublesome muggleborn know-it-all Gryffindor, suited him. Her nature was mirrored his. They wanted power and strength and to be the best. He valued knowledge and books. Her intentions were more moral than his since the world was not his problem, but it was cute how passionate she was. He pictured a little stubborn bulldog when she set her mind to a task. That was often a problem for him in Hogwarts since he made a point to be the archnemesis of Harry Potter in every way. He’d overlooked the witch with blaring disability.   
Something extraordinary lurked within her being. She was special.   
And it was possible that her heart might have him in it.   
“I thought I could depend on you.” She crossed her arms in obvious frustration.  
“Me?” His father sputtered.  
Apparently, his own thoughts had left him unprepared for much comeback itself. Lucius probably saw visions of greatness in her body, a powerful shape to the Malfoy future inside that small fragile witch.  
Hermione Granger nodded as she blinked back tears. She wiped her cheeks gently. “I can always -.” Her voice was cut off with emotion. She stole a few ragged, shallow breaths.   
There were sobs ready to expel. Any moment now. Draco knew it, from experience.  
He gently touched her shoulder. “Let’s take a break and get you some tea, hm? This can wait.”  
Out of the corner of his eye, he witnessed his mother arch a slender eyebrow.  
The soft watery eyes of his Granger beheld him as a savior as she offered her hand up to him. With hesitation. That would never cease to amaze him. He accepted it. The little hand in his was like a child he felt needed his protection rather than the hurricane of a witch that she was.  
“We all need some tea.” His mother rose from her seat. She smiled. A swirl in her eye that set his nerves on edge. “Let us use the west parlor.”  
“The west parlor?” Hermione gasped.  
Narcissa paused. “You know it?”  
Hermione shook her head. “Lucius never let us see it.”  
The two witches walked in the direction of the parlor. The hold of his mother on Hermione’s arm left him puzzled as he followed behind. Pale flesh drawn tight, veins popped through, tense. A hold that would not release.   
Draco slid his hand in his pocket. The stiff feel of his wand gathered confidence in his chest. It was there should he need to use it, and he liked that feeling. He was never caught without it. Not even home.  
The west parlor was Narcissa’s personal room for her guests. It was decorated with floral everything. Floral wallpaper, curtains drawn back so that the flowering grounds made a spectacular view, plants in every corner. It was yellow and green. A breath of warmth in the Manor with was rather cold by nature.   
The train of his mother’s dressed dragged across the ornamental rug on the way to her preferred seat: a winged back armchair of rosy hue. A collection of magazines and her favorite statuette sat at her right side within easy reach. His mother rang for tea and biscuits as was done for guests in Malfoy Manor.  
He hid his satisfaction as he took the seat aside Hermione Granger. Albeit, it was closer than he should have sat.  
His body was comfortable near her. It drew him closer than proper.   
Lucius rolled his eyes, flipped his hair over his shoulder and took the other seat at the loveseat. His black robes were tossed behind him before he sat. It was all rather dramatic. For a guest, it might have made him intimidating.  
Granger was too familiar with Lucius from her world to be bothered by his theatrics.  
She was too enthralled by the room. Her neck twisted one way then another, taking it all in.  
Draco groaned. “It’s not that impressive.”  
“It’s beautiful,” Hermione cooed. “So warm.”  
It was in his mother’s manners to thank her with the utmost grace. She was rather pleased. It was what the witch lived to do, to impress.   
“It’s not as brilliant as my suite,” he mumbled. “That at least makes sense.”  
The way Granger rubbed his arm did not comfort him. Neither did her tone. “Oh, of course, Draco.”  
An elf laid down a tray of teacups, two steaming tea kettles, an array of sweets and biscuits, fresh sliced fruit and a stack of fine china porcelain plates. Narcissa poured from the kettles. She made a cup for Draco, equal parts tea and sugar. Lucius was much the same. One kettle was set down and she lifted the second and poured her own.   
The black tea was dense and dark. Its strength wafted in steam up through the air.  
She tested it once with a slight dip of her tongue within the hot bath. A glimmer captured her eye. A good strong tea was hard to find. His mother loved the strong bitterness of black tea. The blacker, the better.  
Her body melted within her chair, no longer so rigid with the manners of perfection but rather comfort. Her pretty blue eyes flashed to the witch at Draco’s side.  
Hermione gestured toward the second kettle. “I like it strong.”  
The small, animated hands of his mother poured the tea into Hermione’s cup.   
Draco winced as Hermione raised the tea to her lips. The tea was bitter and tasted like malt. He remembered the taste in a distinct memory where piping hot tea spilled down his chest in revolution from its wicked taste. It was literal evil in a cup.  
However, Hermione sighed over the hot cup and smiled softly. “That’s perfection.”  
“A witch that can hold her tea,” Narcissa commented. “I’m impressed.”  
Visible pride filled the Gryffindor’s chest. She looked at Draco with excitement. He found himself excited for her.  
His mother’s approval was highly prized, even at the cost it came to find her.   
Lucius hissed softly but remained quiet as he drank his tea. It was opposite of what Draco knew his father to be. He was cautious that the new behavior was a plot of demise for the witch, and Draco made a point to watch him close through the entire encounter.   
After a while, Narcissa bored of the silence amongst them. She removed the outer robes of her outfit, content in the light airy dress of simple silver silk and loosened her posture. “So tell me, darling. What are the Malfoy’s like where you come from? How did you come to be a part of their lives?”  
Hermione chuckled below her breath. “It was so long ago. I hardly remember a time where they weren’t apart of it.” Her eyes glanced at Draco. They were soft, wide with enthrallment, and kind in his presence. She truly was at home with him near. He put his hand over hers. She then turned back to his mother. “We all first met through the muggleborn outreach program. It was meant to welcome muggleborns slowly to the world of magic. Peers of the same age were brought to this sort of mentoring group to help ease the transition and allow the Ministry to ensure that all muggleborns were taken care of properly before their Hogwarts age.”  
There was a soft snicker. It came from the Malfoy elder.  
“Who’d ever propose such a ridiculous program?”  
A strong tidal wave of Gryffindor resistance met his. “You did.”  
It was the second time he was taken aback so hard that he could not speak.   
“You are on the Board of Governors and felt that the introduction of muggleborns into Hogwarts was too sudden, and their prior experiences were left ignored by the school. You made a point to ensure all the children were adequately supported in their days before Hogwarts. None starved. None were abused. All received education just as most wizards did. It was a great accomplishment. One that made you eternal to the school,” Hermione stated.  
Draco watched his mother regard his father with a bit of surprise in her face. A soft swirl in her eyes, as if admiration for a man that was not her own husband.  
Hermione continued. “Draco was appointed the mentor of someone else. A boy. Neville Longbottom. But, we were matched later at Lucius request.”  
“My request?” Lucius repeated.  
She nodded. “Your request. It seemed Draco and I were more compatible than our previous pairings because we were both very intelligent and valued education with the same respect. We began meeting outside of the program just as friends. He told me about his life with magic. I got to share all my muggle things with him. We just made a good pair.” Then she started to laugh. “We used to have this competition: who could read more books in a month. I’d stay up all night reading any book I could find. Draco cheated by reading shorter books than I. It wasn’t against the rules, but it was against their spirit.”  
Soon, his own mother joined the laughter. She said that sounded very much like her son. It made Hermione beaming to have shared a moment with her.   
He gave her hand a squeeze of support as he sat there with an interest of his own to hear the story of how hell froze, and stars aligned for the pair of them to become anything more than enemies.  
“That was history, wasn’t it?” His mother said with a grin. “You were together ever since.”  
The brunette bobbed her head in agreement. “We have ups and downs as anybody. Draco’s moody. I’m persistent. Sometimes ours nerves get the better of us. But we always just gravitate back together. Plus, Lucius could never stand it when Draco sulked. He’d write me himself just to have me come to the Manor and reconcile. Partially, I think he just liked having me around.”  
“You speak of Lucius with high regard,” Narcissa pointed out. She lowered her teacup to its saucer. “You love my husband.”  
“I do.” Her eyes glanced over at the dark demon across from her, clearly bothered by the fact that it was not the same man she adored. “He guided me. Both of us, really. But I didn’t have anyone to teach me about the wizarding world. I didn’t know anything about their traditions and etiquette. Lucius was an invaluable teacher. And he was so supportive of the things I wanted to do, even when Draco didn’t understand them. Lucius did.”  
That was news.   
It was difficult to picture Lucius with a soft heart. He was not the type to be an altruist. Lucius was loyal to his family and his duty. That was it. Outsiders were not welcome in the world of Malfoys.  
It hurt, too, to hear that he didn’t support her dreams. Or whatever it was. His father took a role that Draco should have. Always.   
Draco swallowed down his tea to keep the words from spilling out. The curiosity drowned with the liquid.   
His mother leaned forward. Arms crossed atop her knee. “Enough about these wizards. What about me? Do we get on fantastically? I’ll wager I get the daughter I always wanted in you.”  
A deadly silence came to the room. Hermione let out a startled gasp. Her big eyes turned to him.  
He’d forgotten…  
Sadness crept its way to her eyes. They pleaded for him to say it. The threat of tears behind their screams. If she had to say it, she’d sob uncontrollably.   
“It’s alright,” he whispered.  
“What’s alright?” Lucius snapped, suddenly aware of the change in the room.  
Draco licked his lips. His eyes met his mothers. They were so confused. Filled with question. He was going to be the one to inject heartbreak there.   
His throat went dry. He cleared his throat, but it didn’t come back.  
“Mum,” he said softly, “Hermione’s never met you before.”  
“How can that be? She’s my wife. If she knows me, then she knows Narcissa.”  
He shook his head. “No. I mean that Hermione has never met you because you’re dead.” A horrific look overtook his mother’s beauty. “You died in childbirth with my sister.”  
It was a painful quiet that filled the room. No one spoke. No one breathed. It was as if time stood still.  
The grip on his hand turned strong as Hermione held him in the only way she was able. The tiny fingers laced between his. He stared down at their joined hands with a bit of envy for the Draco that got to touch her anytime he wanted. It was a luxury. The other Draco deserved to know how precious this witch was.   
Suddenly a soft voice split the tension. “Did the baby survive?”  
It was his mother that asked. She was sad.  
Hermione shook her head. “It was too early. The placenta broke away and you just kept bleeding. They couldn’t stop it.”  
Narcissa leaned back in her chair.  
It ached the way her face was tortured with the news. “All this time…I wondered about that child we wanted to have. What it would have been like to have two children in this house. How Lucius and Draco might have liked a little girl to spoil.”  
“Small blessings, dear.” Lucius reached over and gripped his wife’s hand tightly in his own.  
“They were never the same without you,” Hermione said quietly. “That’s why I came here. I created a spell for Draco’s birthday. I asked the House to find me a way to find Narcissa so that their hearts might be cured from the void of your loss. I thought it’d bring me back in time.”  
Draco’s parents remained silent.  
“Lucius never remarried. He never even dated a witch. After you, he poured himself into his son. And your memory.” Hermione’s voice was filled with strong emotion. Like sadness and hope. “Draco never stops looking into the sky with the hopes that you might be up there with the Black’s somewhere. He wanted you to see him looking night after night. Knowing that you were never gone from his thoughts. You mattered the world to both of them. The two men in my life who mean the world to me. I just wanted to find you. Perhaps find a way for him to see you himself and know that you love him.”  
Hermione hugged herself tight against Draco. He felt tears stream down her cheeks onto his neck. Their salty scent overpowered all the cinnamon beauty of her.   
He wrapped his arms around her body and hugged her back. He forced all the emotion of what she’d brought to him into their embrace. She deserved to know that he, no matter what version it was, would love her for all eternity because he started to realize that after all the years of sparring with Granger in the halls and teasing her endlessly might have been suppressing something, somewhere inside his soul, that was attracted to the un-Slytherin witch who rivaled him in every way.  
The Malfoy family sat in silence for what felt like hours. Draco wasn’t sure. He was all too absorbed into the moment with Hermione Granger in his lap, against his chest, secure in his hold and trusted in his good nature not to hurt her.  
Salazar, how he wanted the real thing. He wanted that.  
“We should get her back, Lucius.” Narcissa ran a finger beneath her eye. It wiped away the slight moisture collected there.  
“It might take some time,” he answered.  
“I want her to get back. Soon. My husband and son love her very deeply. They’ll miss her greatly, and I can’t imagine their heartbreak if she were to never return,” his mother said.  
Lucius nodded his head in agreement. When his mother looked to him, Draco nodded too. He agreed that she needed to go back. It pained him to believe it. He hated that righteous duty to himself that wanted him to be happy.   
A version of him found a way to happiness. That was a triumph. It was something he still sought.   
Narcissa raised and outstretched her hand to Hermione. “Come, child. I’d like to speak with you before you go.”  
The two witches walked hand in hand away from the ears of others. It left Draco and his father alone in the silence of the parlor. He hated the way it was all flowers, everywhere. It was brightly colored and the exact image of what he imagined as a Hufflepuff dormitory.  
Still, he couldn’t will himself to hatred. It was his mother’s. And from what he’d learned, she was a precious commodity.   
“My son.”  
Lucius regarded his son with a softer grey eye, the permanent scowl lost from his skin. The wrinkles of its absence stretched down his chin. Draco met his gaze.  
“Yes, father.”  
“You have been the son I wanted. From the moment you opened your eyes. You’ve made me a proud father. You embody exactly what a Malfoy is with the witty charms of your mother and the intelligence better than both your parents combined,” Lucius stated without a biting tone. Words flowed from their genuine source with ease. “I have taught you loyalty, honor, tradition. You know your obligations.”  
Draco swallowed. “Yes, father. I know my obligations as a Malfoy heir.”  
“What I never taught you, as I’d hoped you’d learn on your own, is there is another set of obligations far more important that you must follow.”  
“More important than family?”  
Lucius nodded. “You have an obligation to yourself, son. You have an obligation to make yourself happy and seize it with everything inside you. Your family have given you that right. You have been given every single opportunity that this world offers. That is what I wanted for you. My heir to have the right to live the life they chose without limitation.” His father then adjusted the collar of his shirt away from his throat. “Now I realize that in my quest for such freedom, I’ve given you limitation that I hadn’t foreseen. It would seem that I’ve clipped the height of your brilliance in lieu of our family bloodline.”  
Draco blinked once. Twice. Three times for certain.  
Was his father giving him permission to love a less than pureblooded witch?  
“I would never want you to dirty your reputation with anything else than perfection, son. That will always be held true. For any kind of witch, mud-muggleborn or pureblood. You deserve the best because it is what you are.”  
“Are you saying you’d approve my courting Granger?”  
“I’d not stop you, Draco, from being who you need to be.”  
“Mighty noble of you. Sure you’re not a Gryffindor?”  
His father shrugged with a snide smile. “If it all ends badly, I’ll claim it was your other father’s fault.”  
Draco exposed a small grin. It was all too good to be true.  
“She made us complete, Father. She made us whole when we were broken.”  
Lucius nodded. Actually nodded.  
“A saving grace,” he murmured.  
They remained in quiet compilation of their own alternate selves. It was alluring. Hard to dispel once the idea latched in their brains. Another life. A life without Narcissa, but a life without the Dark Lord. Both were important in their current life, unable to be forgotten, but just how large was the void in the sweetest of the world? Did it taste less bitter knowing that they would move on?   
He doubted his mother was not missed. It was clear from Hermione’s story, her story, that she was thought of everyday, reached for like a distant star.   
More than he cared to admit, he thought of Granger. His Granger.   
Hermione, the other version, presented a better image of what they could be together. The two undoubtedly the smartest the school ever saw. When paired, nothing could stop them.   
They could take the entire world by storm, their storm, for whatever they wished, they’d accomplish.  
He liked that future. A future without the Dark Lord or massacre. That left them with a large laundry list to accomplish after she left them.   
Overthrow the Dark Lord. Ensure that he didn’t win. Do everything in their power to prevent him from rising.  
That task seemed insurmountable itself.  
Hermione Granger entered the parlor a short while later with Draco’s mother at her side. Her eyes were set on him. They blared with adoration.   
“I’m ready,” she proclaimed.  
“Let’s get to it then,” Lucius said. He rose from his seat.  
Draco followed. Each step toward her exit a stomp upon his heart. He couldn’t find the power to muster any ounce of joy for her. He hated it.  
If she stayed, he’d be happy. He knew that deep in his heart. If she just stayed there with him…  
Lucius led the way to the piste. It was a good space to prefect a spell. Lots of room with protective enchantments in place to prevent injury. He tied a small ribbon at the base of his neck where his platinum hair rested. It cinched the strands tight together. The black cloak was thrown from his shoulders and tossed to the side.  
Narcissa stood beside Hermione, gently rubbing her back as they waited for a sign that it was time.  
He stayed still and silent as his father readied himself. He rolled up his sleeves.   
Suddenly he turned on toe and stretched his arm out. “My dear. It’s time.”  
There was hesitation in her as his father regarded her with his intense gaze the way a predator regards his prey. Her breath quickened. True to her Gryffindor spirit, she powered through the clear distrust of Lucius and accepted his hand, allowed herself to be led in the center of the open space and waited for the plan to be revealed. A plan Draco wasn’t so certain of.   
It was in Lucius power to send her to nowhere. He was fully capable of entrapping her within the Malfoy Manor instead of her own timeline.   
“What did you use to form the base of your spell?” Lucius asked.  
“The apparition spell.”  
“With the Manor as the conductor?”  
White teeth bit into her bottom lip. “Yes.”  
“Recant it for me,” he said.  
Hermione recited the words Draco heard all afternoon. She kept her voice steady. Even as the spell did not take, yet again.  
Lucius listened closely. He leaned closer with each word.  
“The spell is centered upon Narcissa,” he retorted.  
“Well that’s who I was intent on seeing. I wanted to ensure it brought me to the right time.”  
His father grunted lowly deep in thought. It bothered Draco.  
“What does it matter? The spell clearly didn’t work right.” He growled. “We’ve got to create our own spell to send her back.”  
“But it took me weeks to create it,” Hermione exhaled.  
Narcissa sighed. “If that is what we must do, we’ll protect her until we can send her home.”  
His father shook his head. “We don’t have that kind of time.”  
“We can’t just leave her,” Draco spat. His hands were fists in his pockets. “If Voldemort finds her, he’ll kill her.”  
The crunch of time pressed against Draco’s shoulders. He felt the pressure of the Dark Lord’s weight atop him. They were cloaked in darkness. There was no escape of his inner circle now that he was returned.   
It was no place of safety for her.   
He looked to his mother. She reflected a similar worry.  
She adjusted her curls. “We’ll hide her. We have many properties. Not all under the Dark Lord’s watch. We’ll find a safe house for her.”  
“Or give her to Potter.”  
Both his parents stopped their thoughts and stared. Hermione, too, was surprised by his statement.  
He shrugged them away. “I know he won’t hurt her. He’ll hide her better than us.”  
“But I don’t know any Potter,” she told him. “I’d rather not go with strangers!”  
“In this world, you and Harry Potter and Ron Weasley are best friends. They aren’t strangers to you here.”  
Her brows knit together. “I know a Ronald Weasley, but I don’t know any Harry.”  
“He’s in our year. In Gryffindor, same as you.”  
“Ronald, yes. But no Harry,” she said.  
A hint of curiosity changed his father’s posture. He was suddenly interested in Hermione’s news. Draco felt chills gather within his spine. Whatever it was, he felt the tension.   
What did Potter matter?  
“Lily Evans and James Potter never had a son?” His father asked.  
The strangest look tainted the witch’s face. “Lily Evans? You mean Professor Snape’s wife?”  
“Snape?” The Malfoy’s all repeated in unison, with an equal amount of disbelief.  
“ _They_ have twins named Severine and Rowan,” Hermione explained. “They’re a year behind us in school.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “There is a boy named Potter in our grade. But he’s a Hufflepuff. Ralston Potter.”  
Narcissa was eerily interested. “What an interesting little world you come from.”  
“Sounds like a bloody paradise,” Draco muttered. “No Saint Potter.”  
“Son.” A stern fatherly voice erupted from his father’s throat.   
Draco raised his brow.  
“The Potter boy is the only one strong enough to defeat the Dark Lord,” his father stated.  
Ugh. Now it was back to Saint Potter being his usual saint self. He huffed. The bloody wizard always ruined his good thoughts.  
His mother touched his shoulder. “It’s alright, darling. We’ll figure all this out. We’ll ensure we’re all safe. Won’t we, Lucius?”  
He’d returned to his thoughts. His hands held his chin as he paced the length of the piste.   
“Narcissa,” he mumbled. “The spell. Hm. There is something. I just cannot see it.”  
“Perhaps I am the one needed to send her home?” His mother offered.  
He waved his hand dismissively. “No. The spell is meant for a single caster. Miss Granger made it that way. The spell itself is complicated. It infuses many different types of strong spells. One that any sixth year is lucky to know.”  
“If you think about it,” Draco snickered, “she didn’t get it wrong.”  
“What did you say?” His father asked.  
Draco thought it was obvious.   
“The house brought her to a Narcissa. Not the one that Hermione thought, but it technically worked. The spell did it’s job. It found my mother and thus brought her here.”  
Hermione gasped. “You mean to say that I should just do the return spell? That it will return me since the spell is completed?”  
Lucius snapped his attention to her. “You’ve not tried it?”  
She shook her head. “The spell wasn’t complete. A return spell won’t work without the proper execution. I thought the spell backfired. Not that it worked.”  
There was a breath of relief. They’d discovered a way to send her home. At least, they felt it was.   
“Only one to find out,” Lucius said.   
She took a deep breath. Her wand rested in her palm.   
Draco swallowed. She was leaving.  
She changed his life. Her one visit brought so many answers to questions he hadn’t considered yet.   
That she, _Hermione Granger_ , was the answer to him.   
“Wait,” he declared.  
Her brown puppy eyes gleamed with tears. _Relief._  
She was not his Granger.  
But there was a Granger out there for him. One who’d never listen to him. Not without help.  
“Can’t you just tell her?” He asked. “Tell her everything like you’ve told us.”  
“Oh, Draco.” Her sigh was so heartbreaking and beautiful.  
She extended her arm. He allowed himself tucked close to her body. The smell of her cinnamon skin. The course waves of her hair in his nose as he rested his cheek against the top of her head. Her small body folded in to his like a piece of a puzzle.   
Why did she have to go?  
“I cannot steal her love story,” she answered softly. “There is a future there. You just have to decide one thing.”  
His breath stopped. “What thing?”  
“Whether you’d like to rewrite history,” she answered softly.


	2. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue: Draco is left a hefty choice to weigh: does he pursue the future that was revealed possible or has hope for it all been clouded by the threat of the Dark Lord?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: As always. None of these characters are mine. J.K. Rowling gets the checks. I’m just happy to give her ideas for amendments if she feels up for it.  
> Also, please keep strong during these uncertain times. COVID-19 is a scary situation. I hope you are all safe and secure. Please reach out to me on my Tumblr account https://severussnapedamagedlove.tumblr.com/ or online through this website if you have comments, questions, concerns or need a beta reader or reviewer. I love my fanfiction!

### Epilogue:

“If you keep staring, she’s going to think you’re trying to curse her.”  
Draco growled beneath his breath. “I am not staring.”  
Hogwarts was filled with laughter at the entry of a new term. It was still the first week. The excitement hadn’t worn off yet. Meals were chaotic and loud. An echoing thunder of noise rattled Draco’s ear drums. The entire experience of the Great Hall overwhelmed the senses: the flurry of scents of hot foods atop the tables, the applause of a thousand conversations at the same time, endless bodies packed in benches down the length of the room.  
He had more important things to think of. Hermione Granger, for one.  
She was beautiful in her uniform with the small ‘P’ on her Gryffindor badge. It was her pride. Her chest displayed it. Her brown curls were tossed back over her shoulder to show it off to the whole room.  
“She already knows somethings amiss,” Goyle said.  
“You _complimented_ her,” Crabbe reiterated. “Did you see her face?”  
“Downright horrified.” Goyle shook his head at his cup of tea.  
A grumble rolled at the back of Draco’s throat. He did not like their critiques. It was all uncharted water. The map was a blank page he was expected to fill in.  
He internally blushed at the attention of his mistake. It made him angry and embarrassed and just want to plunge his head through a wall. What would the other Draco say to all this fumbling?   
Or, for that matter, the other Hermione.  
He smiled when he imagined the smirk she’d have on her face as he tried to overcome his nerves.  
“Just forget everything and make this your story.” That’s exactly what she’d say. He felt that in his bones.  
Easy for her to say that when she was in a place where things were easier than that!  
An owl flew overhead. Its large body dropped down a single envelope.   
Six days into the term and he had already received a letter?  
 _Have you made contact?_  
It was his father’s rapid scrawl. Draco rolled his eyes.  
 _Before you assume that I’ve the slightest interest, it is your mother’s constant questions that motivate the contents therein. All day. It never stops. She talks of Miss Granger visiting during holidays and worried that the décor might not make her comfortable. Your mother will not listen to reason. We do not even know if this witch will have any interest in_ you.   
Oh for Salazar sake!   
_She’s up in the attic searching for her wedding veil muttering about something or other. Frankly I’m too troubled to ask. If she notices my stagnant hands, she’ll attempt to make them busy redecorating the guest wing as your wedding suite._  
Wedding suite? Veil? Was she intent on mortifying him before he’d even spoken to her? If Granger saw that, she would run screaming.   
_Your mother has lost her mind and if you are making me endure this tortuous pain of viewing your baby clothes as your mother weeps about how grown you’ve gotten just for the fun of it, I’ll send her to you for the term. Contact Granger. Then contact your mother and tell her before I curse myself._  
Draco crumpled the letter in his hand. What the bleeding hell was wrong with his parents? They were so cool and collected and reserved. They were Malfoy’s! Now they spoke of weddings and redecorating the Manor and baby clothes. It was all too fast. So fast.   
So Granger had come from another universe and was all in love with him and the family? So what? That did not guarantee that his Hermione Granger would be the same. There was much more history between them. They were enemies still. Not friends.  
They had hurdles to overcome. It was Draco bound to do most of the jumping seeing as she didn’t know the possibilities of their futures, together.  
He awoke from his thoughts, unbeknownst that he’d been staring at her for the past solid minute, and he realized her eyes were locked with his. They were the same puppy dog eyes he saw over the summer and in his dreams ever since. This was his Granger. Not the head-over-heels-in-love, equality, no bullying past that there was with that witch, and yet there was no hostility when she regarded him.   
A swirl erupted beneath his flesh. He knew it was his Granger as they got lost in their stare, but it wasn’t the look he remembered from before where trust and admiration poured from her sweet eyes.   
Draco missed that need from her. He missed what it mattered to be hers.   
He was nudged in the ribs. “Come on, Draco. They’re all going out to the quad.”  
The whole of the upper years of the Slytherin house rose up from the table, filtered out the hall in a steady flow. The eyes of his friends looked to him. They awaited his approval. Pansy’s brown eyes, still frustrated with their summer breakup, drilled holes through his face with the great intensity. That was yet another flame in the fire of what he had to handle.   
He internally groaned. It was not in his mood to deal with this.  
“Fine,” he said.  
As he stood from his seat, he felt her eyes on him. Through the fallen strands of his hair, he confirmed his suspicions. Hermione eyed him closely out the corner of her eye as she spoke with the young Weasley witch.   
He swallowed down his nerves. It was frustrating to withhold the desire to embrace her.   
Draco followed Slytherin house, led his friends, out through the corridors of the castle to the quad. It was often tradition for Slytherin to only associate with themselves. The houses of Hogwarts interacted differently than most. The Ravenclaws, he Hufflepuffs, and the Gryffindors all easily mingled together. It was the Slytherins that struggled to meld.   
The quad was empty; the rest of the student body was at their meal. Groups spread out through the grass. Pansy and Millicent and Daphne squished together on a cement bench. Blaise and Theo shot balls of ice out the ends of their wands and attempted to catch them. Many shards of ice splattered against the cobble stones.   
Draco transfigured his scarf to a blanket. The black fabric covered the damp green grass. He exhaled sharply as he fell to the ground.  
It was going to be a long term. He felt that to his core. A letter every day from his parents. At the very least.   
He ripped his fingers through his hair while thoughts of their chaotic requests swirled beneath his scalp. His father had been right about one thing: there was no secure way to know Hermione would feel the same way. It was possible (his heart filled with stabbing needles at the very thought) that the damage he’d done was already too great to overcome. Hermione had friends. Other wizards. They protected her.  
The other Hermione hadn’t had those. Draco was in their place before Hogwarts. He was all she needed back there.   
But here? Here. They were her two personal bodyguards who defended her honor to the bitter end.   
“What a bloody mess,” he mumbled to himself.  
The early September sun shined down in blaring clarity through the quad. It warmed Draco’s skin. He laid there in the bright morning sun seemingly king of the world as his panic turned to anxiety to an outbreak of chaos within him.   
He thought of what if. That terrible disease.   
What if she never let him get close?  
What if she was unable to believe his sincerity?  
What if…they never ended up together?  
His parent’s support depended upon this. They were in love. They loved the idea of Hermione Granger within their family. Her power, her ambition, no matter how misaligned it was with their personal goals, was extraordinary. The life she yearned to lead – one where she put good into the world – was possible with Malfoy connections and endless vaults. Her search for knowledge. That unquenchable thirst would be stalled many years within the archives of Malfoy Manor and the library there.   
Whether he wanted to admit it or not, Lucius held highly restricted books that the Ministry searched for within the public. They didn’t want the information loose. It was there in the Malfoy family home where lost knowledge laid, in wait for another to delve deep through the pages.  
Hermione was that witch. That he knew. There was no other in his mind.  
Draco opened his eyes when the warmth of sunlight upon his cheeks turned to chill. A dark shadow loomed overhead with a short bob of black hair and two piercing brown eyes that were different than usual. Saddened, perhaps, would be the word he’d describe. To be truthful, he never paid that much attention to them before.   
He met eyes with the witch. “Yes?”  
“You didn’t answer any of my owls, Draco,” Pansy Parkinson said.   
Her lips turned to a frown. Their pale flesh was slender and rather miniscule beneath her curved nose. She wore violet lipstick. A small hoop hanged from the edge of her right nostril.   
Draco scowled. “What is that?”  
Her face twisted in confusion as her fingers traced across the pale flesh of her face until it landed, quite gingerly, upon the culprit of Draco’s attention.   
“A nose ring,” she answered.  
“Your parents allowed that?”  
The witch shrugged. “Dunno. I just pierced it last night.”  
“What?”   
Piercings were a muggle thing. The muggleborns had rings in their ears when they entered Hogwarts. None of the witches had them otherwise. He knew what they were. It was easy enough to see them on the streets of muggle London and such.   
By his experience, piercings were popular in the muggle world. He didn’t understand why. Rods of metal in flesh were not appealing to him. Who would deform their body in such a way?  
He stared as Pansy dusted the pleats of her skirt. She sat down beside him on his blanket. Unwelcomed.  
“You know that will scar, right? Your nose will never go back.”  
“Why didn’t you answer my owls?” Her eyes turned on him.  
“I was busy.”  
“Too busy for a simple explanation?”  
The quad was presented with its first pair of other students. Two Hufflepuffs joined a few younger Slytherin students. They greeted one another with hugs. Well, the Huffle’s hugged while the Slytherin’s pretended not to enjoy it.   
Draco wanted to enjoy some outdoor peace. Some semblances of calm.   
Hogwarts was chaotic. His mind was chaotic. Life outside the castle was chaotic, too.  
Voldemort was still a threat. He was a problem for more than just Harry Potter. It was for the Malfoy family. They were deep, too deep, in the ranks of the Death Eaters to just walk away. They would never leave. Alive.   
Lucius plotted a plan that would shield them from the Dark Lord’s wrath and keep them safe when he was overthrown. Draco never asked the specifics. He did not want to know what it required for that. The price was large, no doubt. A burden if known, but if not, then never realized.  
His father swore it was handled. That was enough for Draco.  
“I deserve an explanation, Draco. You can’t just throw me away like rubbish.”  
He groaned. Why had he let it get this far? Why had he let her believe there were emotions in their connection? Childhood friends never made good partners. Romantically. It was too awkward. And their friendship was so close that he already knew exactly her opinion on everything, and she knew his too. There was little excitement in that.  
Sure, it suited her just fine. He thought he was the same way. Pureblood witches and wizards were raised to understand that marriage was a contract for the best family, best outcome. No emotions involved. It was first for their wellbeing. That was logical.   
One bushy haired beauty changed his entire view. He wanted more. He wanted love. Connection. Devotion.   
It was not easy. It never was.  
But allowing Pansy clear influence over his life was not suited anymore. Being mean to her when she tried to become intimate was not suited either.   
It was wrong. His throat swelled at the thought of lying about his feelings, tricking Pansy into believing there was another purpose other than the truth: he did not like her.   
He grabbed a breath before he started. “Pansy. I think of you as a friend. But I have no interest in anything further. The thought of kissing you, romantically, makes me…uncomfortable. I have never felt any inclination toward feeling something more than acquaintances. Well, friends perhaps. I mean, we have known each other since childhood. There is that familiarity there. But, as far as courting… We’ve given this a good shot, but it’s reached an end.”  
Her jaw fell open. She looked horror stricken. A sheet of white as the blood drained from her face.  
“Oh.” Her breaths turned ragged.  
“You had to have felt it, too.”  
Pansy gulped very loudly. Her eyes dashed around the quad on the search for onlooking eyes. A rim of water rose up above the dark kohl lined lower lashes. “Right. Totally. It was time.”  
“I hope you didn’t disfigure your flesh because of me.”  
In an instant, her face went from heartbroken to irritated. Draco was uncertain why.  
“Just as a Malfoy to believe the world rotates around them,” she snapped. “No. I did it for myself. I like it. I want a hole in my nose. And you’ve the ego the size of the whole world if you believe this is related to you, Draco Malfoy.”  
She stood in a rush. Her skirts swirled and ballooned from a gust of wind. Her satchel hit Draco’s shoulder as it was hoisted onto her shoulder. He glared. Her anger was her own deal, but it was not his to handle. He handled his emotions. She should do the same.  
Pansy marched off toward her friends who waited near the North Tower balcony for her arrival. They spoke quickly as she approached. Millicent tenderly touched her arm. Pansy shoved her away, snapped something not civil, and disappeared into the darkness of the corridors.   
Draco, too, left the quad with a bitterness in his mouth. Why? He had no idea. It could have been the hopelessness of the future with Voldemort or the impending tension he felt in his body at the thought of never winning over Hermione. Pansy’s antics, class work, and dealing with his new emotions were all a storm. Damn uncharted waters.   
There was not a person in the world, witch or wizard, he wanted to talk with more than the other Hermione. She was a talented listener. Plus, he liked the way she didn’t shy around things. That was refreshing. Honesty. A rare enough trait in Slytherin house. Even rarer in the Malfoy family.   
It was a pain as much as it was a pleasure, but Draco would not mind if it came from her sweet lips.  
He was on his way to the Slytherin common room when the trio appeared in the corridor. Potter and Weasley were on either side of her as a wall of impenetrable glass for any wizard to break through. They spied him first.   
Potter tensed his hold on his side where Draco knew a wand rested. Weasley openly kept his gaze at Draco as they walked.  
In the center of blissful ignorance was Hermione. She held two books against her chest like prized possessions. He heard her voice and was instantly overcome with yearning. An entire month without her was agony. Her being drifted into his bones. The compass of his chest demanded something. Anything!   
Hermione needed to notice him.  
More importantly, he wanted to befuddle her two bodyguards.   
Draco decided to look at her very openly. Her face, her expressive brows, the pouty in her bottom lip that she bit when she got nervous. It soothed his loneliness, _and_ rattled Potter to the core. He glanced at the Weasel with an assuring glance.  
“What are you lookin’ at, Malfoy?” Weasley said.  
He was the easier to taunt. The Gryffindor was easily baited. Just like any other Gryffindor.  
“Granger, of course, til you threw a spanner in the works. Now I’ve got to look at the pair of you.”  
They tensed. He was delighted how they were hesitant to react. It was one of the oddest statements he’d ever made to the trio. Most were sharp, pointed, and dug exactly where they were most tender: between the ribs.   
Now, his statements were more geared at flattering Hermione than hurting them.  
The confusion in their eye was almost as tasty as it was earning her attention. She wore her hair in two plaits twisted and pinned against her head. Her chest rose very high in his proximity. The cinnamon perfume filled his head with thoughts of something much closer and personal, without Potter and Weaslebee as witnesses.  
The wizards were an obstruction, a nuisance in his plans. What else was new?  
“What do you want with her?” Potter questioned.  
“I planned on asking her if she was French,” he answered.  
The pair of idiots retorted the same “what?” in the daft way they always carried on. It was too easy to talk around their minds.  
Draco smirked. “Are you French, because ma –.” Just as the word entered his mouth, Hermione’s eyes met his. The open of their iris as they watched him curiously sent a steady wave of butterflies to his stomach. They fluttered higher and higher until they caught in his throat.  
He stood there unable to say a word. His throat was dry. So dry. Repeatedly, he tried to clear it.  
“Ma - . Ma - . Ma - .”   
She stood there; eyes widened but not with fear. _Anticipation._  
It made him stutter more. A blinding light upon him with an audience of something personal. He clenched his hands to fist, turned the other way, and rushed out of the corridor before another thing could be said. He flew through the castle to the common room where he finally was able to breathe in something other than his own fear. Heat rose to his face. His throat still was parched of all moisture. He summoned up a glass of water. Then another. Then another.   
What. Happened.  
He cleared his throat again. It was finally alive again. His tongue was no longer a dried sponge in his jaw. It moved with vigor now.   
Hermione had been right there. Right there.  
It was perfect. The timing was aligned, the statement flattering but not aggressive, a little funny even. She would have loved it!   
“Bullocks. Bullocks, bullocks. Merlin’s bullocks. Salazar’s bullocks. Fucking bullocks! Ma-DAMN. How hard is that to say? Bloody simple, that’s what it is.”  
His head fell into his hands. It was certain that Hermione was good and frightened of his behavior now that he’d practically froze up in front of her and ran away like a ninny. If she was not suspicious from Platform 9 ¾ where he asked her if she went on holiday somewhere sunny because he noticed her tan lines on her neck from obvious bikini straps and said he liked a girl with a bit of color, she was at this bumbled attempt for reconciliation.  
Draco rose from the floor of his dorm and fell, face first, into his mattress. Let the whole world die so that it might be forgotten. He didn’t want to leave his bed for one thing.  
Only, he had to. There were classes that were mandatory attendance.   
It was Potions up first. It was also the class that he attended with Hermione and Potter. His jaw clenched the entire trek down to the classroom. The plunge through an invisible wall of air where the sharp tangy scent of Potions pierced the cool stagnant air of the dungeons. There was the bitter smell of something burnt. Then sickly sweet of flowers. A spicy taste came when he breathed through his mouth.   
Chill came to his burning humiliation. The dungeons were home to him. It calmed his nerves.   
If he focused on a bit of work, it would distract him. He would not look at her once. Not once.  
Crabbe and Goyle waited outside the classroom for him. The door was closed. Professor Slughorn was away. They were forced to wait in the hall until he decided to return. That meant waiting. With Gryffindors.   
Again, his mouth went dry.   
“Where did you run off to?” Crabbe grumbled. “We looked everywhere. You just disappeared.”  
Draco Malfoy did not have the patience. He was too focused on himself. His breathed was too frantic. The pulse throughout his body was on edge as he waited for her. Suddenly his clothes felt dislodged and ill fitting. It was too tight across the chest. Each breath pushed the buttons of his shirt out than he liked.  
He sighed. “I am capable of finding the loo on my own.”  
“Course,” Crabbe murmured in response.  
The pair of wizards huddled off to the side by themselves, out of his way. They murmured of the impending Quidditch season. The two were Slytherin’s Beaters on the Pitch.   
He played on the team, too. As the Seeker. It required focus and dedication and peak physical ability. An art in motion through the air. Draco loved everything about the game. He was agile and quick. The Snitch was not an easy thing to control like a Quaffle or a Bludger. It required skill. A chase. Something that pumped the blood to restless limbs with a high-inducing amount of adrenaline.  
It was a thrill that Draco tried to chase in many aspects of his life. He wanted that. There was nothing better than a prize that he earned and deserved through his hard work and cunning.   
A black figure sauntered down the corridor. The flowy cape of the Professor’s attire fluttered in the wind behind him as he strode, full speed, toward his class. His eyes beheld the students with indifference, as if he hadn’t cared whether they showed up or not.   
“What’s he doing here?” was whispered through the crowd. “He’s supposed to be in D.A.D.A.”  
It was difficult to imagine to the wizard as a personal tutor to him and Hermione. The other Professor Snape was married to a muggleborn, too. Potter’s mum. Odd how different the world was when blood supremacy was eliminated.  
A flick of the Professor’s wand and the door burst open. He strode through first. Draco was second. The rest of the class filtered in through the tables and chairs as time approached the beginning of class.  
Draco took a seat at a table in the back of the room. The vantage point of the back of the room made his classmates easy to observe without their notice. He made a point to learn their habits in case it ever came to his advantage.  
Though he hadn’t seen in her in the corridor, Hermione was one of the early comers to the class. She placed her books down gingerly. Each one handled with great care. Draco smirked as her fingers ghosted the length of the bindings in search of injury.   
“Your professor has been detained,” Professor Snape said blandly. His eyes drifted across the sea of faces he recognized from his own classes of previous years. “And today you will be brewing a most difficult, potent potion. Half of you will fail in doing so.”  
Lucky for Draco, he was a skilled brewer. It would not be difficult to brew whatever Professor Snape threw at them.  
“Any guesses at to what might fail you so easily?” The thin brows arched in question.  
Much to her credit, Hermione raised her hand. She knew the answer. As she did to everything.  
He tried to hide it, but Snape rolled his eyes. “Yes, Miss Granger?”  
“Amortentia,” she said. “Most would believe that a love potion is not a serious brew, but Amortentia is one of the strongest influences a person can be under.”  
Professor Snape scowled. “Miss Granger, why can I not receive a simple answer. Must you insist on teaching the entire class before the lesson’s ever begun. Perhaps you’d prefer to take my place at the head of the class.”  
A snicker spread through the Slytherin students. It was a whispering chitter below the silence of the class.  
Hermione nibbled her bottom lip. It was often, in this universe, that Professor Snape openly corrected her within class. Although Draco used to enjoy the snap since the rest of the world catered to the witch, now he felt insulted. It was not in his right to correct the smartest witch like that. She was an asset, a tool to help the class grow. Draco was just as smart, too, but his worth could never be applied for the greater good. That wasn’t his intent. But Hermione Granger? She lived to benefit others.   
The thick limp mess of a tongue in his mouth was dry and useless. Draco summoned up what little life there was to use it with and said, “Amortentia isn’t true love. It isn’t real. It can only be defined as obsession. The name is misleading. What dolt was assigned that job? I wonder just how many plots were done gravely wrong by that misconception.”  
Ripples of disbelief ripped through the entire class. The Slytherins were disappointed in his aid of the Gryffindor’s cause. They enjoyed the discomfort Snape gave the other house. Gryffindors were more or less shocked that he’d aid in Hermione’ cause of explanation after having been chastised for it. A collection of peers held their breaths in wait. Eyes darted between the dark wraith at the head of the class, to Draco in the back then to Hermione beside Potter.  
She was perhaps least surprised of all. He noticed her lips curl into a smirk. The left brow broke out of formation and arched.   
It rattled Professor Snape to the very core to withhold the urge to withdraw points for Gryffindor for her outburst because it meant he’d have to pull from his own house as well.   
“Then,” the professor said in his exaggerated drawl, “we have our first pair for brewing. Miss Granger and Mister Malfoy.” The man was satisfied way beyond measure. It was clear by the lightening of the permanent scowl within his sallow flesh. “A pair as learned as you shall be expected to exceed my standards.”  
Assigned pairs for Potions was not common practice. In fact, it was never done. All partners were chosen by the students when required.   
It was obvious that it was meant to be a punishment; Draco used to hate Granger. Most thought he still did.  
Hermione stacked her books in a small pile, collected her belongings, gave Potter a forced smile, and moved to the back of the classroom where a seat was made for her. She placed them down quietly as Professor Snape went through the instructions of the potion. She found the page in her textbook and followed along. Her eyes scanned through the rest of the recipe with vigor. It must have taken three or four times of rereading the same section she was bound to have already read before she turned to her partner, albeit with caution.   
“I can grab the rose thorns, essence of daisyroot, lovage, rose petals and silverweed, if you want to grab the pearl dust.” Her voice was soft, gentle.   
Draco was overcome with serenity. The need to be close was unbearable.  
He forced a feign control over his hands, nodded once in agreement and waited until she left to breathe. Her perfume was stronger than he remembered. It was enchanting. He was under her control if he smelled that, and the time to reveal that was still not upon him.  
Of course, what other chances would present themselves together, alone, out of earshot of Potter and Weasley? Draco preferred privacy. There was a chance it would produce an outrageous response from her. An entire class as an audience as he explained his change of heart and she laughed in his face was not the ideal moment he imagined.   
He collected the Pearl Dust from the Professor’s Table at the front of the class. It took half a minute. Hermione was still fighting over ingredients with the other ones in need of their ingredients. She should have given him that list. Most moved out of his way when he needed something.   
The idea of helping her leapt to mind. He could go and ask her what else she needed. But. That would insult her. She was capable of gathering her own ingredients.   
Hermione Granger was a capable witch. She knew it, too.   
Draco opted to assemble his cauldron between their seats. He divided the supplies between their sides. Each one of them would have their own duties. Neither would ride on the other’s coattails.   
When he was done, he waited. He watched the crowd dissipate. She, a victor, with all their vials and jars of ingredients in her arms. Her face was softened when the puppy eyes landed upon their set up. They scoured the length of their workspace. A small curl glinted at the corner of her mouth.  
He swallowed. Sweat beaded at the back of his neck. His fingers played with the tip of his tie. It was too casual to loosen a tie in front of a witch. Especially this one. The impression had to remain formal and respectful. A witch like her deserved that.  
Tension stiffened his throat as she drew nearer, mouth open to say something. There was doubt he’d be able to muster a response. It was as if all the liquid of his body was sucked away. His mouth burned. Tongue refused to cooperate. The back of his throat was a lost cause. No water ever helped it ease.  
Warm cinnamon broke through his iron will and made his insides a melted mess.   
A jar of crimson red rose petals was offered to him. “Would you mind? I’ll get started chopping these.”  
Again, he nodded. He lit a fire below the cauldron, threw in the rose petals with a bit of water, and turned them to mush as she made work of the rest of the ingredients. A trick he learned was to reserve water at the beginning of a brew to make it more potent. He only added when necessary.   
The crimson hue bled away from the petals. Their vibrancy turned dull. A delicate scent of rose flowers filled his mind. It reminded him of his mother’s rose garden at Malfoy Manor. Those flowers were grown with love and attention. He wondered if that yielded stronger potions than just ones planted for their cultivation.   
Draco’s hands left the stir of the cauldron. The vial of essence of daisyroot was on his side. The next ingredient.   
He paused. When had she put that there?   
He pulled the topper from the glass and measured out the correct amount noted in the recipe. Once he checked twice that the amount of perfect, the yellow liquid was poured in. The potion immediately changed. Rose perfume no longer rose from the steaming cauldron. It was changed. The crimson water suddenly thickened and rolled with small bubbles.   
Draco swirled the stirrer three times forward, then backward ten times. Just as he opened his mouth to request the next ingredient, a pair of small hands reached over his and sprinkled ground silverweed over the concoction. It spread sharp silver veins throughout.   
The pair of them worked silently. Each did their job and moved fluidly as a team.  
It was much better than the rest of the pairs within the room. Gregory Goyle and Vincent Crabbe stirred forward ten times and backward three times, and their potion turned burnt black. It clouded the entire classroom with a stinky dark cloud. Seamus Finnegan and Lavender Brown managed to light theirs aflame. They were forced to disturb Professor Snape’s schedule of scowling in displeasure and suffocate the flames before they spread to the rest of the room.   
Harry Potter and Dean Thomas worked frantically. The stirs were too rapid and uncontrolled as the two rambled about what to do next. Luckily they kept their cauldron under control. Daphne Greengrass and Pansy Parkinson struggled in silence, but it was evident that they were on the same broom as the rest of the class.  
Except for Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger.  
They presented their potion with complete confidence that it was perfection, much to their professor’s chagrin, because the pearl sheen and swirling steam were spot on. He declared he wasn’t thoroughly disappointed. Then made a point to explain that if the rest of their classmates hadn’t been total numpties the potion would have been average.   
Draco gritted his teeth. That potion was spot on perfection. Everyone could see that.   
“I bet Slughorn would have given us an ‘O’ for that,” Hermione grumbled as she walked to the back of the class with him.  
His heart thudded in his chest. It was time. This was the chance to open communication.  
He raced through his thoughts to think of something to say. It needed to reflect thought, wisdom, sincerity. All the things he knew very little about. But he knew very little of intimacy before he met the other Hermione Granger and now he knew that with her, it was the best it would ever be.  
Draco cleared his throat to dispel the tension his flesh felt. “Yes. It is common curtesy to give high grades to the prettiest in the class. Is nothing sacred anymore?”  
Hermione giggled. _Amusement._ That was not what he’d wanted to pursue but that little rattle at the back of her throat was cute. So cute.   
“I always suspected your looks had something to do with it,” she said with a soft sigh.   
“I meant us both,” Draco clarified swiftly. “You are the prettiest witch. I, clearly, the prettiest wizard.”  
Her eyes narrowed. “I’d have guessed Pansy the prettiest seeing as she is your girlfriend.”  
A creeping crawling sensation ascended his spine. He shifted uncomfortably. “Yes, well, no. We’ve decided to part ways.”  
“Really?”  
“Yes. I suggested it and she complied…in a way.”  
Hermione narrowed her eyes. “Meaning you dumped her. What a surprise. Did she look kindly at an elf?”  
Draco snorted. She, too, let her doubt clouded her features.  
“Fine. That does sound far off,” she admitted. “You’d sooner be kinder to one than her I’d wager.”  
“You underestimate me, Hermione.”  
Something changed. She was suddenly at attention. Her body shifted in his direction, leaned in closer. Panic flooded. Draco didn’t understand the change and it bothered him that he hadn’t realized whatever it was he’d done. He shifted again. The knot of his tie was flush against his throat. His fingers danced the dense fabric.  
“Class dismissed.”  
Next was a burst of students out of seats and out the door. Potter was at Hermione’s shoulder, Crabbe and Goyle were at his. Draco jumped from his seat, glad to be free of the confusion of the moment with Hermione and bounded out of class back to Slytherin Common Room. The whole way Crabbe and Goyle complained of their stench.   
“It’s like my socks after a week,” Crabbe winced as he folded his collar back down.  
Goyle’s nose wrinkled. “Worse than that. It’s like when my nan’s house burned. I can even taste it in my mouth.”  
“Or burned toast. Like the worse burned.”  
Draco growled. “Will you two shut up? Can’t think will all your racket.”  
They entered the common room with a sigh of relief. No other students lingered near. Most were in class. As sixth years, there were extra free periods in the day now. It was meant for studying. N.E.W.T. classes were a big deal. Much harder than any class before them.   
Crabbe and Goyle were happy to throw themselves down to the cool leather couches and sink through their cushion. Crabbe smothered his face deep. Goyle flicked off his trainers. Two black socks animated with large toes wiggled in the free air. Draco scowled.   
It was the last thing he wanted to do with his free time: smell Goyle’s feet or listen to Crabbe snore.   
He settled in a chair near the glass panes that outlooked through the murky blue of the lake. Shadows of deep creatures lurked just beyond sight. All was seen was their black blur out through the blue. Even then, eyes weren’t to be trusted. They disappeared with a blink of an eye.  
The windows chilled the air. Draco was cooled to the depths of the lake as he gazed out. Questions of further plans fought for dominance within his mind. He heard snippets of many ideas. Draco recalled a conversation – conversation was a bit of a stretch since Pansy liked to hear her own voice and only hers – that girls deserved to be showered with luxurious gifts. Expensive gifts.   
He frowned. That did not sound like Hermione. That sounded like Pansy.   
What did Hermione Granger like?  
Books. Obviously. It was all she spent her time doing: reading. When she wasn’t studying.  
“Did you notice?” He suddenly heard.  
Draco pulled out of his thoughts. “What?”  
“Granger,” Goyle said.   
His eyes were closed. The entirety of his body was spread across a love seat. The scatter cushions were scattered about the floor in front of him. It clenched Draco’s jaw to see the disregard of the common room. They were in an ancient castle. The least bit of respect was owed to that. Salazar Slytherin didn’t construct the common room for two dolts to toss it about.   
Was he cursed to clean up their messes forever? He waved his wand and commanded, “Leviosa.”  
Their fluffy bodies rose from the floor. His wand directed them to another chair where they dropped into a neat pile. Better than on the floor.  
His long fingers rubbed his temples. “What about her?”  
“Something is different.”  
“Well, what is it?” Draco hissed. “What’s different?”  
To his fury, Goyle shrugged. “Don’t know. I just think she’s different.”  
“Maybe she likes you,” Crabbe mumbled through coach cushions.   
Draco growled a warning. If they were going to mock him, he’d hex their balls off.  
“Don’t be ridiculous.”  
“No, really, Draco. She liked brewing with you. We seen her smile.”  
It was not characteristic of Goyle or Crabbe to lie to him. They were too loyal to him. But the news made him doubt their observation as truth only because it was unlikely that Hermione would change her emotions for him unprompted. That was not true of a Gryffindor.   
Something else leeched its way inside of him. A black liquid all over his insides. It was a thing that lived within him. When it released from wherever it lived, it had total control over him. He was frozen, impossible to deny its will.   
His breath went unsteady as he tried to stop the black from rising. He gulped it down the back of his throat. Over and over, he gulped it back. Fingernails pierced the wood of the armchair where he sat.   
Neither of his friends noticed the change in him as they rested in silence, oblivious to the war inside him.  
Draco fought against the swallowing black spew. It won parts of him. His guts were twisted and tangled in the stuff. In total agony. Muscles of his legs too were forced to withstand the steady chew of black until it made them weak.   
The more dark gained. Soon his entire body was consumed by the dark. Draco was lost to the frantic pull in all directions. He had to leave.  
His feet found their footing and lead him down a path he knew by heart. He barely put thought into the place he went. His attention was beyond the clouds. Positive, happy thoughts.  
He was losing.   
Draco ran up the winding stair of the Astronomy Tower until he reached the wide-open top. Nothing but a short wire railing separated him from the heights. He brought himself right to the edge. The tips of his shoes hanged over the emptiness of air as his fists clenched the wire with all the life in him.  
His chest shook. He couldn’t catch his breath. It all crashed around him. His life. His world. His worth.  
What was he doing? He wasn’t strong enough for all of it.   
Hermione wasn’t meant for him. She deserved better than him. He was an absolute nothing at the bottom of her shoe. His wealth, his stature would not sway her. He’d thrown it all in jeopardy with the Dark Lord for nothing. Voldemort would kill him. His entire family. They’d be slaughtered all over an impossible future.   
His palms went suddenly wet with sweat. A knot rose through his throat. A tension rolled his stomach in flips. The urge to vomit was unescapable.   
Draco leaned over the railing and vomited until he was certain his intestines had come out through his throat. He fell to the floor, cheek against the cold metal rail. The world spun. His eyes crossed from all the motion.  
A hand touched his head. He was not able to focus on it. His body ached and quaked.   
Another wave of vomit erupted out of him. It was so sudden. He didn’t lean over in time to catch it all.   
“Tergeo,” said a voice as sweet as honey.   
His body was cradled against her body as she held him. He quivered from the heaves. His thoughts still spun fast enough to catch flight.   
There was no confusion as to who held him. He felt her body move as he remembered. The only witch a shred of intimate body touching he ever knew. Her chest rose and fell. The strong scent of cinnamon and ink, as if she’d just come from the library. Small hands wrapped around him, not unlike ones he’d seen not long before in Potions. It was her. His peace.  
Draco laid against her for many minutes in absolute silence. He’d never suffered from a fit that much before. Not enough to lose his footing.  
He gained enough strength to raise from her hold and sit on his own. He refused to make eye contact. She couldn’t see him that way.   
Still, the pull of her eyes was too strong. He yearned for those comforting eyes. Now more than ever.  
Hermione dipped her face low and met his eyes before he’d gathered the strength to meet hers.  
“Are you alright?” She asked gently. Her words were very gathered and steady.  
He nodded. Strength hadn’t come to his vocal cords just yet.  
“Do you want to go see Madame Pomphrey?”  
Salazar, no. The old bat never made him better. If anything, she enjoyed his suffering.  
Draco swallowed down the awful taste of sour bile and shook his head.  
She stood there in plain view, hands outreached for his, a lower lip under attack from her teeth. The look was unreadable. He guessed it was his distance from peace inside himself that made his mind blank when it came to her.  
Everything went blank when it came to her.  
She had to know. He needed the words to come from him.  
“Does it happen often?”  
His eyes abandoned their haze. “What?” He asked stiffly.  
“It was a panic attack, wasn’t it?” The beautiful brown of her eyes dove in through his eyes without hesitation.  
How did she not fear him now? She knew his past of hexes and curses that were never kind to her. Why did she not withdraw from the privacy of his company?  
Draco shrugged. His throat was dry and tasted awful. “Sometimes.”  
“What do you do?”  
“Wait for it to stop.”  
Her voice went quiet. “Don’t you tell anyone? Have them comfort you? Help cope with it?”  
He shook his head. “A Malfoy does not show weakness. Not even to his own kin.”  
She nodded. Her hands fell to her sides. The height of her cheeks fell low. She turned to her side and started to rummage through the messenger bag off her shoulder until she found what it was she searched for. Two glass vials. Their murky shimmers were corked tightly and sealed with a Granger wax stamp. She broke off the seals. The sharp zing of one potion domineered over the subtle, less obvious scent of the other one.   
Hermione handed them over. “Here. Take these. They’ll help with your stomach and this one will help you calm down.”  
“I don’t want to be reliant on potions,” he said. He took the bright pink vial. It was for his stomach.   
“Too bad. Take it.” The other vial was thrust into his hand without a choice. “You need it. Take it.”  
“I told you. I don’t want to rely on a potion to deal with my problems.”  
A hard resolution set in her brown eyes that turned them dark. “Well, it’s not up to you. It is what your body needs. Something you have no control over. Your mind is responding to stress and this is the only way it knows how. If you take the Calming Draught, it is less likely a fit like that will happen. Learn to cope, Draco, not weather.”  
Draco growled. “And what’s _that_ supposed to mean?”  
She sighed. “Weathering the storm. Survival. I know it’s what your good at. Anyone knows that a Slytherin knows how to survive. But you have to live with yourself. Don’t just survive. Cope. Learn how to embrace it and thrive. Helping yourself makes you stronger.” She tilted her head. “Strong enough to achieve your goals. That’s important to you, isn’t it?”  
The glass was in hand. It was right there.   
He wasn’t certain why, but he trusted her. She knew what was best for him. That was something he liked; she put everyone’s best interests first.   
The wax crumbled off the neck of the vial. “Fine. But if anyone asks, you cursed me to drink it.”  
“Agreed.” She smiled softly.  
The Calming Draught was sweet. It was seductive. He wanted more. That slippery allure of liquid calm as it filled up his limbs. His heart stalled in place. Weight lifted away from his forehead.  
Hermione put her hand on his shoulder and gently guided him downward. “You’ll need a few minutes to adjust. It will feel like a high since you were down so low.”  
A high was right. He felt like a bottle of firewhiskey. It made him inhale that beautiful scent in deeply through his nose. That goodness lived inside his lungs. He felt the bubbly warmth of cinnamon inside.  
His body melted to the floor where he sat. An open view of fluffy white clouds in a blue sky. It was the loveliest thing he’d ever seen.  
“You have to see this.”   
He pulled Hermione down next to him, holding her hand in his. He exhaled a content sigh. “I could look at this all day. It’s almost as pretty as your eyes. Those sparkle. The sky doesn’t sparkle. Except in the morning. Then the sun light fills the clouds with golden glitter.”  
Hermione scoffed like a soft breath. “My eyes?”  
Draco lost himself in the high of it. He pulled her against him in a side hug as he marveled at the sky. She shifted a bit but made no sound of resistance. “I like the way a Slytherin badge looks next to those eyes.”  
“Slytherin badge?” She wrinkled her nose.  
“Yeah. Mine, of course. It brought out the…perfection of your eyes. Your whole face, really.” He felt suddenly relieved. All his worries and woes. Gone. Vanished. Poof! “I never thought I’d have a type. Sure, brunettes were a favorite. Malfoy’s have been blondes for centuries. I just liked the idea of something different, but I never thought it meant I’d actually get one. Now look at me. Hopelessly in love with a brunette.”  
She stiffened. “What?”  
His fingers laced between hers. “I was not raised to know defeat or admit when I was the one in the wrong. My own damn pride doesn’t like it. But,” he swallowed thickly, “I think I’m finally able to admit it. I was wrong. I was wrong about everything. I let my family, tradition, my friends cloud my judgement long before I ever knew any of you. In truth, I never cared that you were muggleborn, Hermione. I swear. It was just something to snap back when you said something witty that I couldn’t best. A better gentlemen would have respected you. I’m embarrassed of what I’ve done to my peers, but more hurt by the look you give me when I come near. You’re scared. I hate myself for that.”  
“What are you saying, Draco?”  
Draco found her eyes like a lighthouse on the coast of those uncharted waters. Though there was tension, rolling of the sea in his stomach as the words came out of his mouth, he knew solid ground was fast approaching. The land was in sight.   
He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. “I’m in love with you, Hermione.”  
She was so stunned she fell back, away from his hold. Her fingers wretched out of his. The bright white of her eyes blazed bright as she beheld him. _Speechless. Enraged. Flabberghasted._  
She was gone the next minute. And Draco felt more crushed than ever.  
He hoisted his legs over the edge, railing at his chest and gazed at the beyond of the fading horizon of darkness that awaited the other side. Things would never be the same again.  
The next morning, he skipped breakfast. His head pounded like a drum with each beat of his heart. Light blinded him. Even the hazy glow of candlelight. A pair of dark sunglasses were added to his school uniform for the day. Most of the professors avoided them. Except Professor McGonagall. She directly asked him to remove them. When he refused, he was awarded a week of detention.  
“Gladly,” he spat. He rose from his desk and stormed out the door.   
The wide-eyed stares of his classmates filled him with a bit of old childish pride. At least some part of him was unchanged.   
Draco Malfoy was a different wizard. One he didn’t know.   
He tossed his backpack atop green grass of the school lawn and closed his eyes to block out the sun. The blinding warmth of the sun lightened his mood. The ache in his chest remained a cold place. His fingers turned black each time he tried to reach inside.  
Rejection. He wasn’t ready to face it yet. He’d been so close. The other Hermione promised that it wouldn’t happen. Things were meant to be.   
‘Meant to be’ ha! Nothing on the Earth was meant to be. It was made to be.   
And Hermione Granger was made to not be his. In this world, the differences were too large to overcome.   
That was his fault. None of it was hers. He started the relentless tirade of her and her friends first year because of Harry Potter’s snub in the robe shop. That was never Granger’s fault. But in a way, he resented _her_ choice of Saint Potter, as everyone else did. He hadn’t wanted her, per say, but she chose Harry Potter over him and she had to pay for that.   
It was bruised pride. Damnable pride. The Malfoy curse.   
He laid there with an emptiness inside his chest that he now knew would ache forever. His loss. The loss of eternity and happiness, fate and promise.  
The day turned late. Dark clouds covered the yellow light of the sun. Chill crept across his lips. They turned blue and broken through to the tender flesh below. He touched his hands to his mouth as he stumbled around the frigid lawn, totally lost within his own thoughts.   
Had he sat out there all day? Why did it hurt to move his fingers?  
What would he do without her?  
Draco found himself wandering the aisles of the library later that day. Dusty shelves, leather bindings, and pages filled his nostrils with the single perfume of the room. Often he found his memories accompanied by that singular smell, one that the manor library shared with every library he’d ever entered. It was a nostalgia. A time within himself that he yearned for. Lost in the immense story book pages in wilderness or in an adventure but when it came time to end, he’d not moved from the comfort of his own seat.   
That was a magic he liked. Sure, he adored Quidditch. Bashing, breaking, flying, soaring. It made his heart thud. A love that would never leave him, he knew, but reading was different. It was subtle. A privacy of his mind, something that no other could peer into.   
His father was a serious person with little imagination above business. He did not care for playing children, imaginative adventures or non-serious discussion of dragons and knights.   
Long ago, Draco learned to become the Malfoy his father wanted. He was rewarded for his act. It made him an extension of his own father. The reading was the smallest piece of rebellion possible that would not bring shame to his ancestral line. They could not witness the character he assumed within a story. They could not frown in disapproval over his actions nor chastise him for risks.  
His eyes scoured the long lines of book titles. They rose and fell with the size of novel after novel, walking along in the quiet hum of the atmosphere until his body was thrown off it’s course and onto the ground.   
Draco rose to his elbows, blinked out of his daze and was equally shocked by the person at his side.  
“Hermione.” Her name, a worried exclamation.  
He’d made a point to avoid her at all cost since the Astronomy Tower. Malfoy pride. The savoir of his personal feelings. If he did not see her, she did not exist, and if she did not exist, it was impossible that she rejected his intense feelings for her.  
His heart lied. It throbbed in pain at the thought of hurting her.  
He jumped to his feet and helped her to hers. “Did I hurt you?”  
The wide-eyed gaze met with his. He expected her to look away, but just as his gaze remained steady, hers did too. It stayed right within his grasp. His hands held hers, reveling the touch against his flesh. Life filled in his lungs.   
She remembered herself. Her hands retracted from his.  
“No. You didn’t,” she breathed.  
Four books were scattered on the floor around them. Her eyes hesitantly looked at them until she returned to his needy gaze.  
Her lips were gentle as they spoke to him. “I dropped my books.”  
Draco froze. Was she angry at the damage to her books? Did she expect him to apologize?   
The features of her face were not stretched or furrowed in anger. They remained impassive. Perhaps in disbelief but not enough to register in true shock.   
He gulped thickly. The witch eye’s saw through him. She looked deep into his soul as their bodies were frozen in place, in a secluded, forgotten aisle of the Hogwarts library. The heat of her breath tickled the soft flesh of his throat.   
He gulped again. “Allow me.”  
The gentleman he was gave her time to deny his offer. Which she did not. Hermione changed very little as he collected her items, stacked them carefully together, and held them out for her to take, aware of the space between them. It was polite. Respectful. It was not so personal to become threatening.   
His own body language became a focus near her. Her fear was the last thing he wanted. Also, he did not want to overstep a boundary and be hexed. She was not above that.  
Draco kept a safe distance away so that she felt freedom to escape when it became too uncertain. There was no safe distance from uncertainty for him. It was all strange and new. His eyes saw a different world now. Just as a newborn babe, he was cautious of his surroundings that doubled as threat and comfort. The ambiguity of truth and honor and what he wanted gave power to the darkness inside.   
Hermione touched her open palm to the top book cover. “Do you remember yesterday?”  
His throat clenched. A wish of an indifferent attitude coursed through him. No witch was permitted to his vulnerability. No one. “Push her away,” his pride demanded. “Push her away hard.”  
One glimmer in the corner of her eye changed his mind.  
“Calming droughts are not known for memory loss,” he stated.  
“They’re also not known for creating false feelings or delusions.”  
“I am aware of that.”  
Her eyes fell. They refused to meet his.   
“So, that would mean what you said, you meant.”  
“So it would seem.”  
The silence ate away at their throats. Draco’s confidence was whittled down to nothing in the wake of her tidal wave. He wanted that façade she knew: cool, calm, collected. That Draco Malfoy was an attractive mate.   
A bumbling nervous wreck was not as appealing. He knew it lowered his chances down to the dust upon a stone floor, perhaps even lower. That was just how sure he was Hermione would deny him.   
In what way would she view him with any shred of adoration? The other Hermione was so sure it was possible, but she knew not the damage Draco had already caused. The line was so dense, thick, black and white. They were poised on opposite sides, forced to look at one another as their paths pulled them farther into their allegiances and away from all chances of what laid in the middle.   
It came down to what he wanted. He knew what lurked in the dark. The black side of superiority. Dark Lord reigned over with an iron wand and a fearsome, sickening hold on those with riches and wealth and influence.   
That struck fear into his heart long before the other Hermione Granger entered.  
But now. After her.   
He had to move forward. The ground had to turn grey below his feet.   
It was either allegiance with darkness or a chance at happiness, at life, with Hermione, in the white light.   
He was not moral by nature. It seemed counter intuitive. But he could become so. There was a wretched rigid self-discipline in his flesh that knew how to make it so. No matter how long it took, he’d become moral. There was no other choice. It was either stay the same and accept a fate amongst Death Eaters and death.  
Or, he pursued her with heart.  
“And the outburst in Transfiguration?” Hermione Granger’s eyes were suddenly hardened in his gaze. _Annoyed._  
Draco absently touched the collar of his shirt. It was sweaty down below there. His nerves were consuming him. “A pair of shades didn’t prevent me from seeing the lesson,” he said bitterly. “Hogwarts has become less and less lenient over the years.”  
She arched an eyebrow. “Really? To me it looked a bit like you were hungover.”  
Breath caught in his throat. He exhaled rather sharply.  
“I’m not going to report you,” she said.  
“Hermione, I am not and never have been hungover.”  
She scoffed. “Honestly.”  
When there was not give in his expression, hers turned to one of disbelief. “What about last term when you were caught with a flask of firewhiskey after hours?”  
He rolled his eyes. “It wasn’t mine. Zabini brought it. I was just the one caught with it. It was supposed to be Snape’s patrolling where we were at. He wouldn’t have given me detention had he found me. A long snarky lecture about the dangers of underage drinking, yes. But not detention. How was I supposed to know that Flitwick and Snape switched rounds that night?”  
Hermione shifted her weight. One hip popped out to the side as her arms laced across her chest.  
“Fine. But I still don’t believe you haven’t drank before.”  
He growled softly. “Really? Does my father seem like the sort of wizard who is kind and forgiving? Can you imagine what he’d do if he heard his son and only heir was pissed drunk at school where he expected higher level education? My father would be irate, my mother just ‘disappointed’.”  
Her body language loosened. Her shoulders fell. And the taut pull of her cheeks turned soft as tension dripped away.   
She brushed her fingers across her face. “Merlin. My parents would be silent all summer long. Just little looks of disappointment as if I was already a drunk.”  
“My father would make Snape’s lecture look thrilling,” he said. “I’d be told stories of ‘associates’ with drinking problems and how their lives are god awful. Hear pathetic stories of their disturbed children and lack of fortune.”  
“I have you beat there.” Hermione smiled. “Mum would bring in pictures of livers that were fatty and diseased, or hearts that were poisoned by excess alcohol. My parents are dentists, so they are all about health. Dad would bring in horrible collision photos of drivers under the influence to guilt me. I just know it.”  
A soft smile twitched at his lips. The other Hermione hadn’t revealed just how similar hers were to Draco’s own. Of course that was with his mother dead.  
His heart was suddenly saddened and heavy in his chest.  
“Our parents would get along smashing,” he said.  
The pair fell into a quiet, albeit awkward air. They were together, neither repelled, but their eyes found interest in the things around them rather than each other. Hermione nibbled at her bottom lip, just barely visible.   
He wished for the right words to fill the void.   
He’d already revealed much more than he ever wanted. Last night when he was sick or high with that potion, he said things that were from the other Hermione. It made him disappointed in himself that he had still relied on the love story of the other Draco and Hermione to seduce his. That path was not the right one.  
Draco shoved his hands into his pockets where their nervous shake was hidden. The flutter of his heart was thankfully covered by skin because the tempo in his ears rampaged the moment with the obvious reminder that his task was far from over.  
Luckily, Hermione was flexible enough to remain upfront. Her gaze found his once more, open and curious. There was a strain of caution. That deserved to be there.  
“I don’t know if I can trust you, Draco.”  
He nodded. “I understand.”  
“But I might…start. If you tell me what’s happened, and I know something has. What made you change your mind?” She spoke in gentle voice. It was smooth and seductive. It was the beautiful melody he wanted to hear say his name every morning and every night. “I might understand you better.”  
The other Hermione hadn’t wanted to steal something from this one. It was very special. He knew that.  
If he wanted this Hermione, he had to do it on his own.  
“Please understand. I want to,” Draco answered. “I want to explain it all, but there are things that have to happen first. Naturally. And there is no guarantee they will ever happen. That is up to us.” His throat was raspy and dry. The words cracked out of his mouth in a labored tone. “I love you. That is something I know in my bones. I don’t expect you to return it. I can handle it if you don’t. But I want you. I’m going to do everything I can to prove that I’m someone worthy of your affection.”  
There was a large shift in her body. It was a cut through the happy medium they’d found.  
“I don’t – I don’t know if I can…I can’t.”  
A sharp sting came to his heart. He’d expected it, but it still hurt when the words exited her beautiful mouth.  
He blinked back stinging tears. “I know.”  
Draco turned to leave. He was ready to yet again bury himself beneath a mound of blankets and duvets to forget his life ever happened, but a small hand grabbed hold of his shoulder.  
“I need time.” Her voice was an edge frantic. It hit his ears just right. A frantic panic that said maybe, just maybe, there was something inside her that wanted to give in. “Just give me time to think about all this. Alright?”  
He bowed his head. “Alright.”  
“It might be best if we don’t speak in the interim.”  
Hermione Granger stormed past and left him in a flurry of loneliness and shock of which had his mind aimless in the coming days. He went to class, mind a total blank. The assignments were completed, somehow. He didn’t remember them. Meals did nothing to satisfy the hunger his body felt.   
Day after day he felt a larger hole form inside of him. It was time that his parents be alerted of the situation he found himself in, and with a small bit of luck, they’d drop the vision of their future with Hermione amongst them.   
The motivation to write so, and successfully break his mother’s heart, was harder to find than he imagined. The quill refused to move. There were times when he used his other hand to lower the tip to the parchment, ready to admit defeat, when the quill remained frozen in place.  
He did not want to write his mother; Hermione was the witch he wanted to write.  
But she asked him not to speak to her in the meantime.  
“Technically, a letter would not break her rules,” Goyle observed very casually. “She said ‘speak’. Writing’s not speaking.”  
“But it’s still what she meant. She meant not to contact her. Period.”  
Goyle wagged his finger. “But she said, speak. Not write. A Gryffindor would honor their own loophole. It’s how they are.”  
“She won’t like that.” Draco grabbed a fistful of his own hair and hung overtop his desk fixed between a hard decision and an even harder task. “It’s too Slytherin.”  
“But you are a Slytherin,” Crabbe pointed out. He was two sleeves of biscuits through a box.  
His other friend nodded. “She better get used to it. That’s how we are. That’s how you are. Don’t you remember? You love being a Slytherin. It’s the only thing you ever wanted to be.”  
The frustration with himself summoned a wall of tears. Why was nothing easy? Why was he given a taste of an impossible life? He’d drool forever over a future he imagined possible, with her and him, unstoppable, in love, the definition of powerful and perfect. The other witch he saw now were candles to her blazing flame.   
She was it. The only one.   
“I know.” He groaned.  
What would other Hermione say? What would she have him do? How did she like a Slytherin’s nature?  
His mind quickly replayed every word, every story, every emotion in her visit. It was full of love and romance and a happy family. She’d known the other Draco for so long. They had history.  
He happened to stumble upon the story of how they became more than just dear friends. Their reading contest.  
She chuckled fondly at their competition where Draco was more Slytherin and she was more Gryffindor. He read shorter books to gain more numbers.  
The letter was exactly the same principle. It was his way around her own rule.  
Besides, Goyle was right. Draco Malfoy was a Slytherin. He was proud of his house, too. It fit him perfectly. If there was ever hope for a future with the Gryffindor witch, his Hogwarts house had to be an accepted part of it. He would not abandon parts of himself for the sake of another. Never again.   
He sighed. “Ah, what the bloody hell. I’ll give it a shot. Better than nothing isn’t it?”  
The quill came alive within his hand. It knew just what to say when his mind had doubts a letter would ever be drafted.

_H,  
Seeing as we were the most competent of our class, perhaps our two minds should always be paired in Potions. It would be unfair for idiots to depend upon our marks rather than earning their own. It would be for the good of our peers if we were to remain. Thoughts?  
D. _

It was the best he felt all term. A shred of himself appeared in the dust of hopeless romance, futuristic concern and the never-ending threat of a lunatic madman at war with the world. He smiled as he tucked the parchment into an envelope, sealed it to a letter and dispatched Goyle and Crabbe to the Owlery. He would have done it himself to ensure it done, but detention required his attention.  
Lucius Malfoy would be irate when he learned of detention. Draco formed the excuse as he ascended up toward detention. It was at Professor McGonagall’s office in Hogwarts, near the Gryffindor Tower which Draco knew was near the fifth floor. The temperature of the air warmed gently against his face. He knew he was higher in the castle as he walked.  
Bright beams of sunlight filtered in through glass of windows. It casted the usual dark stone of the castle in a warmer light. It was brighter than he liked. His eyes narrowed. An arm extended ahead of his face as he walked seemingly straight into the sun.  
“Mister Malfoy. I was beginning to worry you’d lost your way.” Professor McGonagall appeared in a stone archway with her hands clasped in front of her long robes. The feather of her witch’s hat wiggled with each sour look she gave him.  
He withheld a biting comment. “No, professor.”  
“I trust you’ve brought a better attitude.”  
“Yes, professor.”  
The piercing eyes appraised him with cruel certainty. Her lips remained a wrinkled line of distaste. They delivered a flush that was not forgotten easily at the escape of her classroom. It made Draco feel insulted at her constant disapproval of him. He was a talented wizard. His marks were second highest in class. Professor McGonagall hated him.  
His jaw clicked in place. It was time to forget earlier grudges. Hermione Granger idolized professors. It was safe to assume that McGonagall was a treasured idol as a powerful witch of Gryffindor, educator, and led by a lion’s heart.   
The witch led the way through her personal office space to an open room filled with a long table with a woven table runner of shimmering gold. There were three tassels on either side of the runner. Few strands were frayed on end.   
Draco appraised the space as a homey feel. It was warm with warmer colors. The image of his mother suddenly leapt to his eyes. Her parlor. It was filled with warmth and light. The smell was even the same.   
He blinked away the thought when the sharp gaze bubbled his flesh. There were rolls upon rolls of parchment atop the table top.   
“Second years were given the extra credit opportunity to draft reasoning behind Animagi and what their forms would take should they be given the choice,” the professor explained. The chain of her glasses swayed. “They were expected to be realistic reasonings for Animagi with real world application.”  
Cool. “Why are you telling me this?”  
“I’d like you to grade them,” she said.  
Draco scoffed. “Me?”  
The withered hand of the witch removed the small spectacles from atop her pointed nose. “Mister Malfoy. I find that a realistic look at such a topic is best judged by those rooted in self-sufficiency. An Animagus is a deeply personal extension of a witch or wizard into another world. The world of animals. Danger is very real. An honest look at the assignment is greatly needed. Besides I find that for all their uses, a Slytherin is best utilized when their work is given without choice.” Her hand motioned toward the parchment. “I’ll review your reasonings, but it rests with you to determine credit. I look forward to reading your thoughts.”  
His hands ached with the tension. The joints of his knuckles seized as the hold in his breath burned through his tissues with greed, finally centered upon the peak of his pain down the length of his fingers.  
His thoughts on others? Another person’s ideas were not his kingdom, his delicacy, his realm.   
The beady eyes watched him stand there consumed with discomfort, words surmounting as thoughts of insufficiency splintered him. It took time to rebuild himself to the task. He was Draco Malfoy. He had honor, respect, and the confidence to complete any task that he put his mind to. The time was now. It was his time to finish a task.  
Professor McGonagall motioned her arm toward the table. Her pursed lips stayed in a white line. He set to work amongst the rolls of parchment with a deep breath and a plead for serenity. The watchful eyes of his professor did not ease his uncertainty and it was painful to remain in limbo.  
Just what had Hermione Granger done to him?  
Later that night, he was in the library burrowed between his studies with the goal to finish assignments before curfew. His detention spent much more time than he expected, and he was at a rush to finish his schoolwork before night’s end. However, his thoughts were very much on Hermione. He wondered how her day was. It was uncommon for him not to have run-ins with the Trio. Daily. Years before, he knew how each day of theirs was judged by their encounters in the halls, across the quad, through the crowd of the Great Hall.   
His stomach twisted as he wondered if any danger had befallen her. That was also not uncommon. Potter attracted all sorts of attention of the unfriendly kind. The back of his throat went dry with worry.  
Another letter. Just one to ensure she was alright.

_H.,  
Are all lions of your house capable of such severe torture or has McGonagall honed her detention skills? I spent hours reading extra credit assignments from second years. Were ours so lame? All said either dog or cat. Entirely unimaginative. Have none of them ever heard of any other animal? I’d imagine myself as an owl. What about you? You’ll be hard pressed to find a better animal: can fly away, rotating heads, deadly talons. All vital traits, wouldn’t you say?   
D. _

It made his pulse settle easier as he sent the note as he’d seen Minister Fudge do within the Ministry of Magic once. It folded itself into a floating paper airplane memo and propelled itself to its destination.  
He started to work at his foot and half long parchment when a paper came fluttering by just nearly missing his cheek as it landed. Splatter of his ink went across the pages of his textbooks when the quill dropped from his hand.  
“Bullocks,” he exclaimed softly as he cleaned up the mess before the ink set.  
The note was folded in similar fashion to his own he sent not long before.  
To his shock there was an actual reply and not the simple return of his note with a very brash comment.  
 _Draco,  
What a surprise that you’ve written me since I said we shouldn’t speak. I’d feign some shock except I know you too well for that. As for potions class, I’ll take the request under consideration.   
I find a cat an acceptable form for animagius transfiguration. They are smart, clawed, and flexible enough to save themselves in moments of dangers. An owl is a logical choice, though I’d dislike coughing up mice skeletons afterward. _  
There was a small sad face at the end of that statement. The dark ink smudged the lines of the face near the cheeks. Draco bit his bottom lip to withhold a smile.   
_You’d have found my second-year parchment for Transfiguration rather interesting. I was commended for my reasonings for taking the form of an apex predator as it has no natural enemies that will naturally hunt you in the transformed body. Owls are actually hunted by foxes and many breeds of cat. A boa constrictor better suits as it is an apex predator and the sigil of your Hogwarts house._  
Leave it to the lioness to write twice as much as he had in a reply. It was only typical of Hermione Granger.  
 _Boa constrictors are renowned for their beautiful colorings, rather attractive to many who pursue exotic pets as a lifestyle. Though, were they better understood, boa constrictors would be feared rather than coveted as it never hesitates to go for the kill. Alluring yet fatal. I’d say it matches you very well._  
Madame Pince tapped the grandfather clock behind her desk with her wand. The sound echoed throughout the calm. It was near time for the library to be closed for the night. He quickly swiped his things into his bag and hustled down to the common room where he drafted a letter in private. The rest of his year was tucked asleep in their beds as he held a quill in hand, aching and burned from overuse.   
_You find me alluring, do you? Well, I’ll say. Granger. Never thought I’d be so flattered by the Golden Princess._  
The first time he attempted to send the note, it crushed it’s nose against the wall of the entrance of the common room. Draco rubbed his temples in thought. What other way was there to get out of the dungeons upward to the towers? He waved his wand over the note until it was in pristine condition once more.  
His eyes caught the glimpse of dark shadows of waters outside. The lull of the water against stained glass was a comforting sound. More than comforting was the truth that little to no enchantments were near the windows since it was deep in the Black Lake and no students dared venture there.  
Glass was simple. The other side of the glass was not.   
He fitted the note with the tightest water proofing spell possible, sent it off with Hermione as the recipient, and hoped that it would reach her in a legible manner without the watery finish of the dank waters of the lake. It was bound to stink the entire girls dormitory if it carried through.   
It was late when the memo was sent. There was no chance that she was still awake.  
Black silk and satin pajamas slipped over his flesh with a slippery comforting embrace. His mind was too muddled to be overstimulated with other textures. The nerves of his pursuit and the strong weight of failure battled with the frantic giddy hope in his chest.  
Since the other Hermione Granger entered his life, Draco Malfoy was torn brick by brick with little effort on her part until he was nothing that he recognized in his hopes and dreams. It was the flick of his wrist, a wand’s wave that changed him.   
Giddy? Hopeful? Those were not words he’d use, in the past, to describe himself. Now it was the exact definition. He did not feel solid ground until he knew for sure. Would she accept his affections or deny them in light of their tortured past?  
Darkness just pitched the night’s tent atop his eyes when a sharp point stabbed the center of his forehead. He peeked open an eye.   
A large folded parchment note sat proudly against his chest.  
Draco warned himself against the seductive nature of hope, but his smile let him forget just for the moment. He was ready to be hurt. As long as it was by Hermione Granger.  
 _Leave it to you to only read that part. I am inclined to agree with every other witch in the castle and say that you are very handsome. Only a fool would deny such a blatant fact. However, your charm has made me rather immune to the fluttering of your eyelashes. You’ll not have the best grades from me. 😉_  
They spent all night fluttering notes back and forth between their dormitories. Hermione was more comfortable in communicating with him over paper than in person. Her words flowed easily from one topic to another. It was in her nature to not hold back the biting comments about his past treatment, however it opened up a very honest line between them.  
With all the restraint he could (the other Hermione made it very difficult for him to say the least), Draco answered her questions about his life prior to the summer term and what exactly made him change his mind. He was honest. Brutally so, that he trembled in anxiety with each admission note until a reply was sent.   
It was the best feeling in his chest to have such light air inside him. Warm and comfortable. Hope. The flutter of hope was an addicting emotion.  
When his eyes finally closed from sheer exhaustion, he knew it was one of the best nights of his entire life.  
Draco Malfoy rose at the same early time he did every morning, though the pep in his step was gone. Crusty grains of sleep rested in the corner of his eyes. Powerful red lines splintered the whites of his eyes as he beheld morning light and cowered away. Little sleep left his mood rather unstable. He was anxious to see Hermione in person after a long night of letters, yet tired and groggy from interrupted sleep and on edge from the terror that it all brought. Crabbe and Goyle read the sharp scowl of his face early on. They remained quiet in his presence to allow him to mull over his discomfort out of notice.  
He growled down at the limp eggs atop his breakfast plate. It was not appetizing. His stomach knotted and uncoiled as he waited, hairs on end, shoulders tense in his frame, eyes shifting back and forth on the search for the slaughter.  
It crossed his mind that Hermione Granger kneaded him for information. There was a chance that Potter and Weasley were told of the contents of the notes to find weakness in his demeanor and attempt to discredit him in public spectacle. His body was very aware of his wand in his pocket. The dark wood peeked through the folds of his uniform in wait.   
His anticipation reached new heights when it was clear that Hermione was late for breakfast.   
They had attended school together for nearly six years now. Very rare did she not rise with the sun, just as he did. It was a ritual. They both sat at their places across the room, in each other’s field of vision as they awaited their reinforcements.   
“Where the hell is she?” He muttered as he stabbed his fork at his plate like a scoundrel. He cared not for the school flatware nor preserving his manners.   
Just when he was about to stomp up to Gryffindor Tower himself and demand her presence, a head with bushy brown hair emerged in sight. Her hands still ran through the volumized locks. The poor curls were beyond help. Strands went every which way. Their frayed ends stood on end.   
Hermione wore her grey jumper of the school uniform with her white shirt beneath and the skirt that went down to her knees. She looked very good even with her frighteningly large hair. The little soft blue flesh around her eyes gave hint that she was just as exhausted as he was.  
The girl Weasley rose from the lion’s table and greeted her friend with a curious look. “Where have you been?” Her lips moved.  
Hermione forced a sad smile. “Sorry. I overslept.”  
She tried to shy away from her friend’s hold, but the witch placed the back of her hand against Hermione’s forehead in utter concern for her health.  
“I’m fine.” Hermione reassured her. “Just late is all.”  
The Gryffindors ate their breakfast as they did almost every morning. Loud and obnoxious. It was the first morning that he had not fazed Draco. He had caught the eye of the pretty brunette witch from across the Hall and shared with her a soft, knowing smile. 

_Mother,  
Thank you for your letters. School has been a challenge this year. I suspect you know why. I’ve come to an old place as a new person, and it’s been troubling to find myself in struggle over who I should be. To your delight, and I suspect your knowledge, Hermione Granger and I have decided to start courting. Imagine the surprise when she revealed a late summer letter from none other than my own beloved parents to the Order of the Phoenix. How you managed that I’ll never know.  
The Dark Lord’s defeat was received well here at Hogwarts. Potter returned with a few bruises but was otherwise intact. My Hermione used the information you gave very well. The Order of the Phoenix is indebted to the Malfoy family. I trust that whatever trials happen to the remaining of His followers will exclude Father and you. Hermione has promised to do her best to ensure that neither of you are punished.  
As for your incessant questions, I have not asked her what her ideal suite layout is and have no plan to in the future. Her favorite color, however, I do have for you: light blue. I know. A Gryffindor that doesn’t like blood red. What a miracle. She’s mentioned visiting the Manor during holiday break so, please for the love of Merlin, do not mention your redecorating or infant clothes or the fact that you’ve found the perfect wedding dress for her. There is to be no humiliation of any kind.   
So help my Mother. If you bring up my days as a young boy, I’ll personally disown myself.  
If I am truthful, which you warned I should always be with you, I am quite baffled at the level of happy I feel. That witch of mine has become precious. I cannot stand to be away from her . She’s taken to wearing my scarf around the castle. She says it is in the spirit to bring the houses of the school together, but I believe she just likes the fact that it is mine and now I must freeze because I refuse to wearing colors of the lions. Can you send another?  
Before term break, I trust you to have the elves tended to and cared for very well. Pay them. What is all the point of those vaults filled with wealth if we cannot afford to pay the help? I need not remind you how dear little creatures are to Hermione. It is imperative that this be taken seriously. Give the elves money, better living quarters, everything you can think of. She will be heartbroken if they are not cared for.   
Tell Father to get his hands on a Pensieve before Christmas. I want it there. I plan to reveal the truth of what happened this summer to her. It is killing her to know. There is a chance she will not believe it as it is rather unbelievable. I’d like all our memories to be given to her as a show of what truly happened.  
It is almost time for Quidditch. I’ll have to be done for now. Potter and Weasley refuse to believe that Girl Weasley and I can win against them. Before you criticize my choice, please realize that these are Hermione’s friends. It will grant me much favor if I play nice. Well, as nice as I can.  
Sincerely your son,  
Draco._

_p.s.  
I deplore you, Mother. Please stop sending the ‘Safe Sex’ pamphlets. I have to hurry and zip them into someone else’s letter before anyone views it in mine. Blaise is really not appreciating all the reminders to wear a condom, and neither am I! _


End file.
